No one should buy a laptop with every single fucking component soldered on. Fuck Apple and every company that does what they do. Get yourself a Framework laptop or one from an actual Linux vendor like System76, Tuxedo, Starlabs......etc. That way you're able to upgrade your shit down the road when you need to. Apple shit is you get what you get.

You'd be making a few concessions, specifically Microphone, and HDMI ~~out~~ in: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-Series-Feature-Support

That being said, those wouldn't deter me personally, especially if I got a good deal on one.

Do not buy an M-series mac just for asahi linux. It's a cool project. It is not daily driveable (yet). However, for using it as a regular laptop with MacOS.... Agh, I'm gonna get hate for this, but it's amazing. I'm a firm believer that you cannot get a better laptop experience than this. Great battery life, great performance, great screen, great touchpad. And as for MacOS, it's like worse GNOME with KDE settings, really nothing to write home about. Install homebrew and it functions like you're used to with linux distros...

Ik apple bad and all, but the way I see it, they are just as bad as other manufacturers like DELL, just that their products are actually good while they work...

As for the actual performance, it completely obliterates X86 counterparts around it's price range, unless you need to game or do graphically intensive stuff.

the whole apple-bad thing aside, you're getting a non-expandable 8 GB laptop, of which a significant portion goes to graphics. that's pretty low today, and it's gonna be worse down the road. speaking of graphics, although Asahi has basic functionality, the driver isn't 100% yet.

I hope you don't plan on torrenting a buncha stuff, as the SSD is small and non-replaceable and after years of use has an insane TBW number.

the battery longevity is a solid argument but you are buying a 4 year old battery that will show signs of aging.

I am all for repurpose/reuse/recycle, but unless you get it for free, or close to it, this thing s a bad idea. get a similarly aged business-class laptop (thinkpad, ~~yoga~~, latitude, elitebook, etc.) that you can cram full of RAM and storage and replace practically every component if it fails.

If you decide to buy a MacBook (and from my recent experience with an M1 Pro I would advise against it) you should check in advance if all your daily software is available. Asahi itself is fairly stable and enjoyable to use, the software repo is still lacking in a lot of places though. As others have said, you’ll probably be better off financially and mentally with a decently specced used Thinkpad if Linux is your primary OS.

The m series really are a game changer for battery life and ease of use and weight. What the other person said about soldered on components is just completely ignoring the reality of the situation. There are plenty of arguments for and against soldered motherboards. Linus Tech Tips has a good video covering it.

The m1 isn’t as good as later chips, and the air really needs more oomph, but I literally run DaVinci Resolve, Lightroom Classic, and insta 360 studio on mine (mine is an M3) at the same time as I’ve got a thousand tabs in Firefox open and it can handle it just fine. Which is saying something as those are not lightweight programs.

I can’t compare it to an m1 air, but my dad has an m1 air and he’s never complained about it. He’s using it for just normal stuff though. Doc editing, web browsing, watching YouTube.

It's not great. I have one, and I am able to use it, but there are some issues. Battery life is the main one. It will probably get 6 hours or so of active use, but they don't have good idle power management, so you don't get much more by turning it off.

Their performance isn't bad. It wasn't ever all that great though. It was mainly ppw that people liked, and you wouldn't really get that benefit with asahi because of the previously mentioned power management issues. Newer AMD laptops will absolutely outperform it.

Another issue that you didn't ask about, but I feel is worth mentioning: apple's build quality is bad. On mine, the display flashes pink sometimes. It did this before I ever put asahi on it. There are many reports of other users with the same issue. When I fist noticed it, it only happened once a month or so. Now I notice it 5-10 times a day, and I don't use it that much (maybe an hour or so a day).

Also, according to Louis Rossmann, there is a data line next to a power line on the motherboard that can easily be shorted out in humidity. He has pointed out many design issues, and usually they persist for quite some time before apple does anything, if they ever do.

I know I am coming across as very biased against apple, but keep in mind that I bought one. I thought that M1 was a large step forward in the quality of their products, and thought it was worth it to get one. I was wrong.

You'll need some active cooling if you're gonna compile some code, so aim at pro 13, same size but without throttling in heavy tasks

Dual boot install first and make sure it’s working good for your needs. Power management and mic in asahi isn’t there.

The computer will be pretty good under asahi and blow everything else out of the water under macOS.

If you don’t already know it, go ahead and learn macOS.

If you’re worried about the ssd being slow, make an install medium and flatten and reinstall macOS with after filling the ssd with bits from dev/random.

Microphone doesn't work yet, if you're doing lots of facebook calls, it won't work.

Not M1 but I tried installing Mint in my touch bar 2021 MBP and zero components worked. No track pad, no keyboard, wifi, Bluetooth etc.

Apple doesn't provide the drivers.