I have an HP victus with linux installed which I use for work. It is heavy and cumbersome to carry always and thus I decided to get a lightweight laptop with good battery life. I was considering to get an M chip macbook and to install linux but later found out that HDMI out function is broken at that time. Instead I opted to get a second hand Thinkpad X1 carbon and it served me well since. My only gripe is that it only has 8 gb of ram that can't be upgraded. If you prioritize battery life, the M chip macbooks really is your only choice but if you have some time to tinker with linux, you can maybe get around 10 hrs of battery life at least for me with my Thinkpad.
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
25 points (80.5% liked)
Linux
65942 readers
530 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
Prisoner says his walled garden is perfect.
I have M5 Macbook Pro as work laptop. Its great but I would still like to try out Intel panther lake laptop with Linux on it. If it's as efficient as advertised then its bettee imo
mac is something different to me. İt is perfect.
That's a carefully crafted illusion. And if you're a power user, it won't last long.
İ could have buy tuxedo infinit book 14 pro but they dont ship to my country. What should i do?
Buy any other laptop, e.g. Lenovo.
Agree! I was disappointed when I switched my work laptop from a Windows laptop to a Mac. Nice hardware, nice battery life, nice integration with my iCloud/phone. Some things you have to get used to. Others are, in my mind, idiotic stuff (I’m looking at you, Task Switcher, third party mouse support, and keyboard troubles when remoting to Windows servers, weird keyboard shortcuts, just to name a few).
Overall it’s better than Windows but it just have some other quirks that I never thought would be a problem/challenge. I’ve gotten used to most and found solutions others most, but still got the biggest issue with the keyboard on remote servers.
What advice do you expect from a Linux discussion group? I suggest you do what you feel is right for a subjective decision like this, all hearing other people's opinions will do is confirm your feelings.
How often do you work for 12-14 hours straight without any access to electricity?
If Linux is actually of any interest for you, giving up on it because of a few hours of battery life, feels weird for me. Why not invest in a power bank or make it work some other way.
With that said. You're obviously free to use whatever you want to. I personally can't stand Apple and their incredibly barebones, limited and locked down operating system.
İt is not only the battery life, it is heavy, hard to carry, it is and windows gaming laptop so i cannot even use it without on charge
Didn't you talk about getting a new laptop computer?
It’s not 12-14 hours of straight working. It’s 12-14 hours without charging. Sometimes it’s just not convenient. Do you always go home from work and remember to charge your laptop? Never forgetting, consistently every day doing this?
Plus thanks to S0 standby using so much power just the laptop being in sleep is a decent battery drain.
Do you always go home from work and remember to charge your laptop? Never forgetting, consistently every day doing this?
Yes...?
Do other people really have a problem doing this?
Yes. Life gets in the way sometimes.
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
You're looking for permission not for recommendation. Get your Macbook.
Actually, you are right brooo
You can use nixpkgs and brew on macOS.
I have both kernel (GNU/Linux and XNU/darwin(macOS)) and even if there is tons of stuff I don't like with macOS and their non-repairable hardware I have to admit that battery life, trackpad feeling, monitor, speaker and build quality are very hard to beat.
But unfortunately due to the undocumented arm architecture of Apple Silicon you will have hard time running GNU/Linux on M macs.
My MacBook is my last non-linux based machine as of today and I have difficulties switching it even if I want it very bad, some of my software don't run well on Linux even through Wine/CrossOver and the battery life and idle power are the main reason why I am still using a lockdown OS on one of my laptop.
Buy whichever suits your needs more.
I have both systems. Linux on desktop, MacOS on my M3 Macbook Pro. I went with the latter because mainly because of battery life and colour accuracy (for graphical work).
That said, with system level AI and all the surveillance bullshit coming to the UK, I will probably start dual booting Asahi if/when it's released for the M3. MacOS will just be for photo/video editing. A shame, because I'll be giving up the battery life.
just use what works for you? 14h battery life is gonna happen when we have proper arm laptops with good linux support, in the meantime you have to compromise. I think there are some arm laptops that are usable on linux, but it's gonna be a science project not a stable workhorse machine
The Intel Panther Lake chips apparently approach the same kind of battery life as the M-series chips, so the newer XPS machines actually look like a worthwhile competitor that's capable of running Linux.
EDIT: The Framework 13 Pro also has a panther lake chip and promises pretty beastly battery life, so if OP is willing to wait, that might be a good alternative as well.
But do they have the same performance per watt under real life workloads?
Intel CPUs are great at 100% idle, and 100% load. Anything less than that and they tend to fall on their face.
My 12th Gen. Intel laptop gets about 4 hours of battery life just doing Remote Desktop. Going full tilt it’s fairly efficient. At 100% idle it can be good. But a simple task that keeps the CPU lightly busy and it falls on its face.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I used a Macbook Pro (M1) for work and I loved it. But a few years in, liquid glass ruined everything making it laggy and incredibly frustrating to use. I had already installed Asahi and I switched to that full time, accepting some battery loss but keeping the excellent hardware still.
So, my point is that you might be able to have the best if both worlds. Look at the Asahi documentation and see if a supported (or even planned) device works for you, and use MacOS until you want to switch to Asahi. I would recommendation installing Asahi ASAP though in case Apple breaks it like they did with OS 27.
Just a suggestion based on my experience, do what seems best for you!
load more comments
(3 replies)
well I could give you a solution, generally with x86_64 architecture they use a lot more wattage than macbooks, m-chip SOC's (system-on-chip) utilize about 30W of energy whereas just a modern x86_64 CPU utilize 15W. which means you have a 15W overhead for your GPU and memory generally speaking.
So the entire reason your getting less battery life is OS required applications for it to function, and you. So if you minimize the amount of wattage (ideally building a linux system from scratch) you can optimize it to consume less resources.
I did this with my personal laptop, installed arch and mangoWM, didn't even bother with a display manager or network manager (still use iwctl). on idle it uses about 600 MB, and I've beaten the m1. my point is not to compare or benchmark the macbook, but to just show you that you can maximize battery life with a little tinkering. So long as you are comfortable doing it.
I have used pop_os and cosmic DE it should be noted that is a beta version of pop_is, which means there are plenty of bugs, which means there are still a lot of optimizations. the fact you could get 12 hour battery is kinda surprising especially with a nvidia GPU.
I am a little confused by the reasoning here. Is battery life your only consideration at all? Are there any other criteria which influence your choice?
It seems like a shame to jump ship on an entire ecosystem solely because your current machine has disappointing battery life.
I recently got a machine with the new Intel 358H and the B390 iGPU. I haven't used it a ton yet, but it seems like it gets around 8-10 hours battery life on normal web browsing/productivity tasks in my experience, and while not as powerful as an RTX 4060 (Most benchmarks place the B390 somewhere between a 3050 and 4050), I imagine would be serviceable for editing and coding.
Which laptop do you have? And battery life isnt the only reason, it is too heavy, it is actually made for windows and it made from plastic. İ want something put your bag and forget. İ dont need rtx4060 anymore
It is an HP Omnibook 7, model 16T-BH000. Mine is 16", but it also comes in a 14" model called 14T-HG000 with the same 300 series processors if that is your preferred size.
It has an aluminum chassis, and I got mine configured with a 120Hz OLED screen. 70Wh battery on the 16" and 68Wh on the 14", though a 3% difference in battery is probably not enough to be noticeable. The 14" weighs around 1.44kg/3.17 lbs while the 16" weighs 1.96kg/4.32 lbs. I think that is actually a smidge lighter than the Macbooks, but not as light as something like the LG gram or the Asus Expertbook series, though I can't speak for either of those as I have never owned them.
HP runs sales on their website frequently, so while my configuration normally would have cost around $2200 USD, I got it on sale for around $1600.
Edit: though I guess per your criteria above, yes, it does come with Windows installed and I ended up putting in a second SSD and installing Linux on that. Buying my own SSD was cheaper than upgrading to a 2TB option on their website, and it has two NVMe slots, so now I can dual boot as well. Also bear in mind that in a Macbook, the SSD is soldered to the motherboard and non-removable.
Just enjoy the MacBook. It’s a fine product. You’ll feel right at home in the Unix terminal.
Also, do you need that long battery life? If yes, ARM or really new intel processors with energy saving cores seem to be the way to go.
Check how much of the hardware Asahi linux supports. But I would avoid buying Apple hardware for this. It is not repairable and they might refuse to help if you run Linux or something. Luke Rossman can tell you about how shit apples customer support is.
Also, do you need that long battery life? If yes, ARM or really new intel processors with energy saving cores seem to be the way to go.
I don't have experience with it myself. But what I've read so far is, that the Snapdragon support by Linux is quite bad. Not sure if I would recommend that...
But the new Intel CPU's are great. They are quite efficient and performant.
ahem
Get whatever the fuck you want.
i'd get an m1/m2 macbook pro second hand that can run asahi linux. even for macOS, the latest version atm (26 Tahoe) is an absolute dumpster fire so i'll get something that can run monterey.
macos is not that bad, you still have to fight the OS to disable intrusive features but not as bad as windows. and macports is good
Asahi while being an incredible project, that I fully support the people working on it, is not very usable.
It's running, sure, but you will miss very important hardware features such as hardware acceleration and speaker. You cannot tell someone "Buy a supported mac and install Asahi on it!" it's not honest about what how your software will utilized your hardware.
i heard they sort of fixed the speaker/gpu and the only 'missing' feature is thunderbolt.
oh, I need to look into it again for my old macbook.
Running Linux on a Macbook is also an option (what I currently do, you need a supported model though), and it would probably have better battery life than an rtx4060 laptop and you get the nice touchpad/screen/aesthetics. Alternatively, you can consider getting a different less power hungry laptop, and in both cases you can use a charging bank if you have to.
ThinkPad and Dell have a bunch of Linux compatible notebooks.
If you are in a European country not being locked into apples ecosystem would be a major argument for me.
just get a mac that supports linux and dualboot
Depends on your coding.
If there is a chance you end up programming for macOS or iOS you’ve got no choice.
view more: next ›