Linux on an MacBook Air M1
Is it too early to give this a go as a new Linux user? From my research online Asahi is my option but it’s still very limited.
Is it too early to give this a go as a new Linux user? From my research online Asahi is my option but it’s still very limited.
It works fairly well. A "daily driver" if you don't mind tinkering. Installed some basic dev tools, runtimes, and container workloads. You'll miss some QOL and efficiencies compared to macOS, and I couldn't quite get the trackpad to feel as good, but that's pretty par-for-the-course when it comes to running a non-macOS OS on a MacBook.
Since dual-boot is the default install option, doesn't hurt to carve other some space for Asahi and give it a whirl. You're intended to be able to use both on the same system as needed.
I'm using Ubuntu on mine almost daily as a VM with UTM in hypervisor mode. Can't call 3d acceleration stable yet, it can lock up often... but with that, I only get about one lockup a week.
You could also run Gentoo on it. Quite a few people are running it successfully: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Jared/Gentoo_On_An_M1_Mac
Thanks! Will look into it. My needs are simple so as long as I can handle a few things I want to try.
I have plenty of RAM and I run Linux on a VM. Works like a charm. You can even use open source hypervisors like UTM.
I wouldn’t bother running it on bare metal just yet.
This, I do most of my work in a Lima VM. Looking forward to replacing macos though
I was researching this option last year and after talking with the Asahi crew via IRC, their advice was at least 16GB of memory and 512GB for SSD because you do have to keep macOS around for certain tasks, like firmware updates. With smaller amounts of disk space and memory, the system will use swap which can use a lot of the write cycles on the SSD.
You should probably check to see if this is still their recommendation.