I cannot disagree with any of that. I was not in a position to wait for a ryzen+High end GPU so I still have an intel i9 and Nvidia laptop. I ended up getting one of the 10th gen intel ThinkPad t15g and I have to say I am quite happy with it among laptops. Finding a laptop with 4 SODIMM slots and a modular discrete GPUI challenging for less than 4K is a bit challenging.

I have been without a proper desktop for 3 years now and I am missing it but it is not quite as painful yet. I do find it interesting that chromeOS is absorbing the android tablet space and that combined with the ability to get to the Linux shell underneath.

the issue with android tablets and MOST Chromebooks is that they are cut down to the least possible cost so the ram/CPU combination is so dramatically underpowered they are just shy of useless. For example, the first-gen Samsung Chromebook plus with their Exynos CPU and 4GB ram was just very pretty and more cumbersome to use than my phone. And I think that is going to be the issue with any robust ARM computing. AMD has some interesting ideas in play that I am kind of excited to see what they do with it.

On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 1:45 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
Most everything I've seen around the M1 chip come across hacker-news (can't watch Linus Tech Tips and not get annoyed by his O-face anymore) say it's heavily software dependent, which great, macos supports, linux if/when supported probably won't, but as usually apple optimizes their os around their hardware quite specifically.  Some testing of windoze arm has even said it runs better on M1 hardware than microsoft arm surface hardware too, so who knows, but I suspect raw linux would run like ass if/when getting to work finally.  If more arm vendors follow suit, perhaps, but until then apple hardware will be another walled garden beholden to their os alone.

I've looked for years to get some hardware such as a tablet or other thin-ish hardware device to be a go-between between my human interface and my hardware systems, but I've never found a substitute for just being able to run different OS's and things on hardware as slim as my laptops.  Android tablets are mostly useless, ipads marginally better, but still nothing replaces a native hardware pc solution, where simply I need cpu+memory+disk, and lots of it.  I'll never get that from arm boxes I think.

My next laptop will likely be a ryzen/threadripper setup and a real gpu.  Intel+nvidia with prime has been an abortion from go some 10 years ago, can't get worse, but buying an 8/16gb fixed (ie. soldered memory) mac with an arm proc/gpu will likely never satiate my need even in a laptop with constantly running separate windows/linux vm's constantly.  Something I'd give to a 10 year old or my grandmother to play bejewelled, fakebook, and tweet with twits, sure.

-mb


On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 12:27 PM Stephen Partington via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
To be honest, there is some significant power in those M1 chips Much more than it would seem. Linus tech tips does a decent job of looking at the performance and workload and it is rather impressive for a first go-round.

On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 12:05 PM Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>> I would be fascinated by seeing Linux running on that level of an arm SoC instead of the glorified mobile shoved in laptop silicon.

I think the arm-based macs are probably great for non-power users that get by with 8gb of ram (ie. most mac users), run no vm's (including Fusion for windoze office, etc), and in general don't do much that isn't a basic app.  Same folks that love to show everyone how they function on an ipad exclusively as ultimate fanbois, but ultimately don't do much with a computer anyways. 

Everyone else still needs Fusion+Windoze, windoze apps, etc in an enterprise as microsoft and others still treat them as a second-class citizen.  Plus I can't imagine these are very good for video or audio editing (yet), which others seem to love macs for, but maybe when they get to the 64 core chips, some more (expandable) ram, and everyone rewrites/optimizes their software for arm instruction instead of intel.

Apple devices always seem more of a fashion statement than anything imho, but whatever one likes...  It's as much a religious debate at this point as linux vs. windoze.

-mb

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A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen