The big win would be a linux capable device. I don't have any interest in mac os x but the apple m parts always seem amazing.
In theory this would be where qualcomm would come in and provide something but in practice they seem to be stuck in qualcomm land where only lawyers matter and actual users and developers can get stuffed.
The only well supported devices are either phones or servers with very little in between.
Even common consumer devices like wifi routers will have ARM SOCs with pinned version of the kernel they are attached to which will get supported for 1 to 2 years at most.
The issue is that it's hacky, and in that case I'd rather go with a Intel or AMD x86 system with more or less out of the box Linux support. What we're looking for is a performant ARM system where Linux is a first class citizen.
Curiously I found it a breeze since it didn't require digging out a flashable boot medium and pointing your BIOS to it. Calling a script from your normal desktop environment and having it automatically boot into the installer was really nice.
> with the partitions already in a good state)
What's this about? The script takes care of resizing the macOS partitions and creating new ones for Linux.
The first time it ran ok. But I had no way to do it again. Spent hours trying to get the Mac partitioner to just clear out the space so I could re-run the installer. No dice.
In the end I did a factory reset of the whole macbook and then I could reinstall Asahi.
If I was less lazy I could probably find this answer online, but how do you find the battery life these days? I'd love to make the switch, but that's the only thing holding me back...
I mean if the experience is as good as any x86 laptop I'd try it in terms of installing any linux distro I want. No interest in android/chromeos myself.
Even Android/ChromeOS should support standard Debian Linux in a VM. If Qualcomm makes a Linux dev box available (announced last year for X1, then sadly cancelled) with UEFI/SystemReady, then mainline Linux developers could contribute to device support.
Asahi linux is making great progress. The only thing they have left to make it a truly capable linux environment is USB-C external display support. Once that lands I plan to use my M-series mac as a Linux machine.
In theory this would be where qualcomm would come in and provide something but in practice they seem to be stuck in qualcomm land where only lawyers matter and actual users and developers can get stuffed.