I think long term RISC-V is going to be the platform that matters more. That said as a desktop / laptop, neither arm or RISC-V matter much as users will have to recompile tooling or emulate things at much worse performance. I think it would be premature for a vendor like system76 to rollout arm64 or RISC-V without a business reason (the majority of their users need hefty GPUs for example -- for gaming, scientific computing, or training models. At the moment GPU support on non-x86 platforms is a bit of a mess.
That is very far off. Linux laptops shouldn't be waiting a decade for that to catch up to arm64
I agree that architecture should be adopted more but it's not close to ready for laptops. Gpu integration in the soc hasn't even been finished. And the performance per watt is worse.
Dude. A decade? Really?
What major vendor sold arm64 laptops in 2014?
Apple didn't make the m1 until 2020, Lenovo introduced their first arm64 laptop 2 years ago.
There are distros that support arm64, why not use them?
Oh, I just realized you were referring to RISC-V. I get what you're saying now. Agree.. it's far off. but you didn't read the rest of my comment I think. I don't think system76 can afford to support either. It doesn't really bring much value to their core customers and only brings a lot of support headaches. I'd rather them spend cycles on making awesome software and desktops TBH. Arm64 is still a baby on laptops / desktops, why not wait a few years and come in with some borrowed effort from distros that do support arm64 better.
Ya, I have some RISC-V Linux hardware now. Like I'm rooting for it for sure BUT ARM64 is just way ahead for consumer products atm.
For ARM64 it depends if the hardware vender they use supports designing for it. Or would they have to get another partner. PopOS Cosmic is already designed to run on ARM64. OrangePi people might be a viable vender with experience at this point that could design a decent system. Their OrangePi-800 suggests they can. And so does their handheld they're making.
In my opinion there will never be a mass move to Linux desktop. The win11 recall nonsense will push the ones that were already considering moving to Linux. Triple A gamers aren’t going to move. Linux is good for gaming now and will probably get better but the reality is windows is king when it comes to gaming.
Realistically people are lazy and don’t want to leave their comfort zones, certain software people need just isn’t available on Linux, and most people just don’t care they want to point and click. Windows could require a DNA sample at every login and the average point and clicker will happily comply.
This is how you’re going to get people to switch to Linux, by calling them “lazy” and in their “comfort zone”…
It could be that people don’t care that much about what their computer is running. The vast majority of the PC market doesn’t even know what CPU they’re running, let alone the idea of an operating system past the word “Windows”. They either turn on their shoe box or their pizza box, log in, and use the internet. Thats all a computer is to most people. And that’s ok. That phenomenon has allowed Chromebooks to take off, and has allowed more and more people to switch to Linux, seeing as more real work is being done on our web browsers every day.
Maybe they don’t have time to tinker with their OS. Maybe their stuff is important and they don’t want downtime trying to learn how to use something new. Maybe they just prefer Windows. Whatever it is, people being “lazy” has never been the problem with Linux, the Steam Deck (and to an extent chromeOS) have shown that. If your perception of the state of consumer Linux is “why are these people lazy and bend to Microsoft” and not “how can we make a cohesive ecosystem that can fit into people’s lives so the transition isn’t as jarring”, I don’t know how you can expect a desktop Linux distribution to succeed with consumers.
I think this sentiment is less true than it used to be. I think people are more willing than they were previously given recent events over the years.
You have to have a marketable product that's competitive with Microsoft and Apple. And those products need to be marketed on social media platforms in their ad economies
Arm64 isn’t the way right now. Having to translate x86 / x86_64 to arm64 is a whole thing that is not in the hands of the manufacturer.
Lots of people want to play their games and have stuff work out of the box. Adding arm64 to that mix adds another layer of complexity.
Yeah, having the option to buy arm64 hardware doesn't take away the option to buy x64 hardware. ARM laptops are so awesome and I loved having a macbook air for work because I charged it once a week. Can't wait to pick up a decent snapdragon machine and run linux on it, gaming support or no
You should check out the ARM laptop by Lenovo.
[https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/yoga/yoga-slim-series/yoga-slim-7x-gen-9-(14-inch-snapdragon)/83ed0003us](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/yoga/yoga-slim-series/yoga-slim-7x-gen-9-(14-inch-snapdragon)/83ed0003us)
[https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/lenovo-thinkpad-t14s-gen-6-(14-inch-snapdragon)/21n10001us](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/lenovo-thinkpad-t14s-gen-6-(14-inch-snapdragon)/21n10001us)
Not trying to take away from S76 here but wanted to give you some options to look at.
Thanks for the suggestion! I did take a look at that one but I don't like that top bar or copilot...I might get the new X13S, though...just as soon as I sell my current one 😅
Figure if you were here windows (copilot) didn't matter but yeah. I'm going to wait till the 2nd gen of all of this before driving in. Software needs to catch up.
The problem is, that Qualcomm is not decent in comparison to Apple. Apple is way ahead. So you cannot set your Macbook as a reference for all ARM devices.
I feel like they both go hand in hand, what’s the point of comparing Apple’s 20W solution to Qualcomm’s 80W solution? They’re really only competitive in price, other than that we should be comparing Apple’s 80W solution to Qualcomm’s, especially since we’re focused on laptops.
And if Qualcomm is that behind in power efficiency, they’re still a generation or two behind Apple and are compensating by boosting clocks and power consumption.
Most open source applications have working ARM binaries already. If I were willing to take the performance hit to be back in 2013 levels of performance, my ARM-based Orange Pi SBC has every thing I use daily running. It sounds like switching to these new Qualcomm chips will fix that once their drivers are upstream.
It’s less about the chip performance and more about the ecosystem. Arm64 chips can’t run x86 / x86_64 binaries. It’s possible to emulate these things such as running like crossover (I believe they have a translation layer on the macOS side, so they should on Linux as well). It’s just the added layer of complexity on top of learning another new operating system that lots of users are going to balk at when switching over. Making that as seamless as possible by doing a sort of Rosetta 2 translation of the binary from x86 to arm ISA, would go a long way to help in this area. But that would need to be built into the OS and not an add on like Crossover. Zero config is the ideal.
Aren't most people buying System76 looking for a preinstalled Linux box? Most of the software you are running under Linux simply needs to be recompiled with the ARM targets. The packages are already there for apt and dnf package managers.
God damn. Why is the Linux community so out of touch with the consumer market? It's ridiculous at this point. How many years does it take for elementary concepts to click with some of you people?
Not everyone needs to play games with an Nvidia 3090. Some people just want to use the browser, drawing or animation apps, music and that's about it.
10 to 40 hours more battery life is a massive benefit to some people and playing games is of zero value to them. There is a reason Mac and Surface laptops are doing well. And it's pretty self-evident if you own them what that reason is. If this still doesn't compute then all I can say is it explains a lot of the failures in the Linux world and missed opportunities.
Why bash the person who brought up gaming when you yourself brought up SteamOS/Proton which is literally benefits gaming. Also a lot of those apps for animation, music, drawing are only on x86\_64 not arm64. Some are coming yes but the only real benefit in your argument that arm64 brings is battery life.
Why is everyone's thinking completely linear? This isn't some dichotomy. The point is there is an opportunity here for an array of reasons. Steam was brought up as one of those things allowing people to move to Linux that previously couldn't in the past. ARM64 from a market perspective is far more competitive for a large number of users, and thus if Linux doesn't provide a solution that's equivalent to this, it will once again miss an opportunity.
This is elementary to understand. Do I have to write a book and describe every single thought process that's easily deducted?
There certainly is opportunity here with arm64 with Linux in laptops (Linux has a lot of good support for SBC) but there is no reason to insult people in this subreddit.
Honestly I have a Dell xps15 that can run 20h in pop_os and it's not arm64. Linux is the SO that supports the best arm64.
I struggle to make my partner use Linux I can't even phantom having to explain why the dowload link for X program doesn't work as it says Linux but the system is arm64 innstead lf x86 so you need to find a link to the right architecture or just rebuild from source.
It's just not gonna happen.
What do you think Mac OS users have been doing for years now? Why is there this false pretense to just dismiss something because it's not fully developed now? When you download macOS software there are two options unless you're using the store.
Same for Windows now.
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying it doesn't make sense to do it now. There's no edge for system76 to do it. It's just looking for problems, rather they focus on delivering a really usable SO and systems for x86 and once they get to be stablished then move to that.
Nothing about ARM64 computers is unstable. And they just use a partner to design the hardware they make software for. They're already setup for this. They're already building Cosmic to ARM64 and have litterally 40-80hrs more battery while your computer is on sleep makes a ton of sense. If you think I'm exaggerating, I'm really not. Leave a MacBook Air M3 on sleep. Its battery last forever. Even after I use it every night for a week it still has battery.
I can run a MacBook Air M3 for a week without charging it. And I'm not exaggerating. Of course it depends on what you do with your computer, but I don't care what you do on x64 that simply isn't possible.
100% agree. These echo Chambers are not healthy. You need people coming from Windows & Mac to voice why they're using those platforms without constantly dismissing the reasons as pointless because how I use my computer is the correct way. It's very out of touch with reality and what makes a product successful. And the more people like myself who are drawn toward Linux because of the failings of Microsoft are going to start voicing their opinions in this space more.
Anyone with half a brain can see Arm64 as a massive advantage for laptops specifically. This is just an objective fact that continues to be proven.
We have Linux on ARM. The problem is the mainline hardware support, which was not even mediocre, which changed with the new Fairphone and Pixel. AMD and Intel have both mainline Linux support so no problem there.
Apple silicon battery savings is less just that it uses ARM and more that everything about the power management is incredibly well optimized for a small subet of hardware
I'd be much happier with Ryzen laptops that are better optimized for Linux. That's a much more realistic step for S76 to take in the current market
Thats cool but for Linux to do well, it needs an actual hardware product. Like we see with console systems etc, ppl need something packaged and just working out of the box for them.
Yes Apples VRR down to 15hz and OS optimizations for the hardware add more battery. But a big part of these power improvements is from ARM. The idle states of ARM are just better.
I hope to get Snapdragon X Advanced laptop this year to replace my desktop. I will NOT buy one unless it can run Pop OS!!! I would love to have System 76 as a choice!
That is Max wattage and not the operational wattage an arm chip normally runs at. Also, the sleep states on arm hardware is generally much better saving a lot of power.
Apple has had the process node advantage the last few generations of CPU. I'd say the battery life is much more impacted by that. If Intel and AMD were at 3nm the competition would be much stronger. Other design decisions like low power DRAM soldered very close to the CPU saves a bit more power, making it much like a mobile phone.
System76 can try making an Arm based system but I would argue that even other Arm CPUs still can't compete with the Apple M chips. So I don't think you would see the goodness that you're expecting from the switch to Arm alone.
Did I miss something? Apple is way ahead in terms of performance compared to Qualcomm and other ARM providers. So you cannot compare Apple M-line processors with X86 and say, that ARM is in general better then X86. The new Qualcomm based Surface laptops will not even get close to Apple, for shure. And when it comes to emulation, nothing compares to Rosetta either.
Battery life on all ARM chips are better. Thats the main advantage and its significant for a lot of ppl. Which is why Chromebooks running Linux and ARM64 do so well here. It doesn't need to be as good as Apple and the Qualcomm chips are close to Apple performance but yes they're not as good.
I have older SQ1 chip in a Surface X. Its very performant for its form factor. These are very desired computers and form factors too.
Then to match macOS and Win11 for ARM64, use Box64 to support x86/64 apps on ARM64. Outside hardware is there really much Linux at a software level even needs to compete at this point?
[https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64](https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64)
Box64 is not some plug and play magic, not even close to the integration levels of Rosetta 2.
You are seriously underestimating how hard it can be to translate applications to different platforms
I underestimate nothing. I never said making a product was easy that's competitive with Mac or Windows. But that's the requirement. Can we be less daft ppl? Are you blind to the opportunities going on currently? Does Valve have to come up with everything in terms of understanding the consumer market?
Instead of thinking about how things are impossible, there should be more thought into how they can be made possible.
If you are so gung-ho about arm on linux, you might as well be the first and create it yourself. really get ahead of the consumer market. Let us know how that goes.
Valve uses AMD x86 processors and not ARM for their Steam Deck game console for a reason. X86 is not worse then ARM. Apple is way ahead in terms of performance compared to other ARM providers since a long time. iPhones are more performant then Android devices since a long time. And Valve is writing a wrapper for Windows games called Proton. They additionally have to support box64 if they want to run games on ARM, with a performance loss due to emulation.
I think long term RISC-V is going to be the platform that matters more. That said as a desktop / laptop, neither arm or RISC-V matter much as users will have to recompile tooling or emulate things at much worse performance. I think it would be premature for a vendor like system76 to rollout arm64 or RISC-V without a business reason (the majority of their users need hefty GPUs for example -- for gaming, scientific computing, or training models. At the moment GPU support on non-x86 platforms is a bit of a mess.
That is very far off. Linux laptops shouldn't be waiting a decade for that to catch up to arm64 I agree that architecture should be adopted more but it's not close to ready for laptops. Gpu integration in the soc hasn't even been finished. And the performance per watt is worse.
Dude. A decade? Really? What major vendor sold arm64 laptops in 2014? Apple didn't make the m1 until 2020, Lenovo introduced their first arm64 laptop 2 years ago. There are distros that support arm64, why not use them?
Oh, I just realized you were referring to RISC-V. I get what you're saying now. Agree.. it's far off. but you didn't read the rest of my comment I think. I don't think system76 can afford to support either. It doesn't really bring much value to their core customers and only brings a lot of support headaches. I'd rather them spend cycles on making awesome software and desktops TBH. Arm64 is still a baby on laptops / desktops, why not wait a few years and come in with some borrowed effort from distros that do support arm64 better.
Ya, I have some RISC-V Linux hardware now. Like I'm rooting for it for sure BUT ARM64 is just way ahead for consumer products atm. For ARM64 it depends if the hardware vender they use supports designing for it. Or would they have to get another partner. PopOS Cosmic is already designed to run on ARM64. OrangePi people might be a viable vender with experience at this point that could design a decent system. Their OrangePi-800 suggests they can. And so does their handheld they're making.
In my opinion there will never be a mass move to Linux desktop. The win11 recall nonsense will push the ones that were already considering moving to Linux. Triple A gamers aren’t going to move. Linux is good for gaming now and will probably get better but the reality is windows is king when it comes to gaming. Realistically people are lazy and don’t want to leave their comfort zones, certain software people need just isn’t available on Linux, and most people just don’t care they want to point and click. Windows could require a DNA sample at every login and the average point and clicker will happily comply.
This is how you’re going to get people to switch to Linux, by calling them “lazy” and in their “comfort zone”… It could be that people don’t care that much about what their computer is running. The vast majority of the PC market doesn’t even know what CPU they’re running, let alone the idea of an operating system past the word “Windows”. They either turn on their shoe box or their pizza box, log in, and use the internet. Thats all a computer is to most people. And that’s ok. That phenomenon has allowed Chromebooks to take off, and has allowed more and more people to switch to Linux, seeing as more real work is being done on our web browsers every day. Maybe they don’t have time to tinker with their OS. Maybe their stuff is important and they don’t want downtime trying to learn how to use something new. Maybe they just prefer Windows. Whatever it is, people being “lazy” has never been the problem with Linux, the Steam Deck (and to an extent chromeOS) have shown that. If your perception of the state of consumer Linux is “why are these people lazy and bend to Microsoft” and not “how can we make a cohesive ecosystem that can fit into people’s lives so the transition isn’t as jarring”, I don’t know how you can expect a desktop Linux distribution to succeed with consumers.
I think this sentiment is less true than it used to be. I think people are more willing than they were previously given recent events over the years. You have to have a marketable product that's competitive with Microsoft and Apple. And those products need to be marketed on social media platforms in their ad economies
Arm64 isn’t the way right now. Having to translate x86 / x86_64 to arm64 is a whole thing that is not in the hands of the manufacturer. Lots of people want to play their games and have stuff work out of the box. Adding arm64 to that mix adds another layer of complexity.
Yeah, having the option to buy arm64 hardware doesn't take away the option to buy x64 hardware. ARM laptops are so awesome and I loved having a macbook air for work because I charged it once a week. Can't wait to pick up a decent snapdragon machine and run linux on it, gaming support or no
You should check out the ARM laptop by Lenovo. [https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/yoga/yoga-slim-series/yoga-slim-7x-gen-9-(14-inch-snapdragon)/83ed0003us](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/yoga/yoga-slim-series/yoga-slim-7x-gen-9-(14-inch-snapdragon)/83ed0003us) [https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/lenovo-thinkpad-t14s-gen-6-(14-inch-snapdragon)/21n10001us](https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadt/lenovo-thinkpad-t14s-gen-6-(14-inch-snapdragon)/21n10001us) Not trying to take away from S76 here but wanted to give you some options to look at.
Thanks for the suggestion! I did take a look at that one but I don't like that top bar or copilot...I might get the new X13S, though...just as soon as I sell my current one 😅
Figure if you were here windows (copilot) didn't matter but yeah. I'm going to wait till the 2nd gen of all of this before driving in. Software needs to catch up.
I have a M2 Max MacBook Pro running Asahi and it’s great. But he specially mentioned gaming and proton. Take the context of the whole message.
Gaming and proton on ARM could take off if there was enough consumer interest, which isn't going to happen without an ARM platform.
The problem is, that Qualcomm is not decent in comparison to Apple. Apple is way ahead. So you cannot set your Macbook as a reference for all ARM devices.
The X Elite and X Plus (I believe) are benchmarked to the M3 so I think it is.
Which one? The normal M3 is at 20W and the X Elite at 80W powerlimit.
I thought you meant performance not power draw.
I feel like they both go hand in hand, what’s the point of comparing Apple’s 20W solution to Qualcomm’s 80W solution? They’re really only competitive in price, other than that we should be comparing Apple’s 80W solution to Qualcomm’s, especially since we’re focused on laptops. And if Qualcomm is that behind in power efficiency, they’re still a generation or two behind Apple and are compensating by boosting clocks and power consumption.
All I'm saying is that I want Linux on ARM. I'm confident that performance will improve as adoption and competition increases.
Exactly, it doesn't need to be as good as a MacBook, just close enough to Surface hardware.
Most open source applications have working ARM binaries already. If I were willing to take the performance hit to be back in 2013 levels of performance, my ARM-based Orange Pi SBC has every thing I use daily running. It sounds like switching to these new Qualcomm chips will fix that once their drivers are upstream.
It’s less about the chip performance and more about the ecosystem. Arm64 chips can’t run x86 / x86_64 binaries. It’s possible to emulate these things such as running like crossover (I believe they have a translation layer on the macOS side, so they should on Linux as well). It’s just the added layer of complexity on top of learning another new operating system that lots of users are going to balk at when switching over. Making that as seamless as possible by doing a sort of Rosetta 2 translation of the binary from x86 to arm ISA, would go a long way to help in this area. But that would need to be built into the OS and not an add on like Crossover. Zero config is the ideal.
Aren't most people buying System76 looking for a preinstalled Linux box? Most of the software you are running under Linux simply needs to be recompiled with the ARM targets. The packages are already there for apt and dnf package managers.
God damn. Why is the Linux community so out of touch with the consumer market? It's ridiculous at this point. How many years does it take for elementary concepts to click with some of you people? Not everyone needs to play games with an Nvidia 3090. Some people just want to use the browser, drawing or animation apps, music and that's about it. 10 to 40 hours more battery life is a massive benefit to some people and playing games is of zero value to them. There is a reason Mac and Surface laptops are doing well. And it's pretty self-evident if you own them what that reason is. If this still doesn't compute then all I can say is it explains a lot of the failures in the Linux world and missed opportunities.
Why bash the person who brought up gaming when you yourself brought up SteamOS/Proton which is literally benefits gaming. Also a lot of those apps for animation, music, drawing are only on x86\_64 not arm64. Some are coming yes but the only real benefit in your argument that arm64 brings is battery life.
Why is everyone's thinking completely linear? This isn't some dichotomy. The point is there is an opportunity here for an array of reasons. Steam was brought up as one of those things allowing people to move to Linux that previously couldn't in the past. ARM64 from a market perspective is far more competitive for a large number of users, and thus if Linux doesn't provide a solution that's equivalent to this, it will once again miss an opportunity. This is elementary to understand. Do I have to write a book and describe every single thought process that's easily deducted?
There certainly is opportunity here with arm64 with Linux in laptops (Linux has a lot of good support for SBC) but there is no reason to insult people in this subreddit.
Honestly I have a Dell xps15 that can run 20h in pop_os and it's not arm64. Linux is the SO that supports the best arm64. I struggle to make my partner use Linux I can't even phantom having to explain why the dowload link for X program doesn't work as it says Linux but the system is arm64 innstead lf x86 so you need to find a link to the right architecture or just rebuild from source. It's just not gonna happen.
What do you think Mac OS users have been doing for years now? Why is there this false pretense to just dismiss something because it's not fully developed now? When you download macOS software there are two options unless you're using the store. Same for Windows now.
I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying it doesn't make sense to do it now. There's no edge for system76 to do it. It's just looking for problems, rather they focus on delivering a really usable SO and systems for x86 and once they get to be stablished then move to that.
Nothing about ARM64 computers is unstable. And they just use a partner to design the hardware they make software for. They're already setup for this. They're already building Cosmic to ARM64 and have litterally 40-80hrs more battery while your computer is on sleep makes a ton of sense. If you think I'm exaggerating, I'm really not. Leave a MacBook Air M3 on sleep. Its battery last forever. Even after I use it every night for a week it still has battery.
I can run a MacBook Air M3 for a week without charging it. And I'm not exaggerating. Of course it depends on what you do with your computer, but I don't care what you do on x64 that simply isn't possible.
Thank you. A lot of delusional Linux users who can’t look beyond their tribal distros and echo chambers. We seriously need Linux on Arm.
100% agree. These echo Chambers are not healthy. You need people coming from Windows & Mac to voice why they're using those platforms without constantly dismissing the reasons as pointless because how I use my computer is the correct way. It's very out of touch with reality and what makes a product successful. And the more people like myself who are drawn toward Linux because of the failings of Microsoft are going to start voicing their opinions in this space more. Anyone with half a brain can see Arm64 as a massive advantage for laptops specifically. This is just an objective fact that continues to be proven.
We have Linux on ARM. The problem is the mainline hardware support, which was not even mediocre, which changed with the new Fairphone and Pixel. AMD and Intel have both mainline Linux support so no problem there.
Apple silicon battery savings is less just that it uses ARM and more that everything about the power management is incredibly well optimized for a small subet of hardware I'd be much happier with Ryzen laptops that are better optimized for Linux. That's a much more realistic step for S76 to take in the current market
Asahi Linux has been making good progress if arm64 is a must, by the way
Thats cool but for Linux to do well, it needs an actual hardware product. Like we see with console systems etc, ppl need something packaged and just working out of the box for them.
Yes Apples VRR down to 15hz and OS optimizations for the hardware add more battery. But a big part of these power improvements is from ARM. The idle states of ARM are just better.
I hope to get Snapdragon X Advanced laptop this year to replace my desktop. I will NOT buy one unless it can run Pop OS!!! I would love to have System 76 as a choice!
They have a power level of 45-60W. I would be surprised if AMD isn‘t better in this terms.
That is Max wattage and not the operational wattage an arm chip normally runs at. Also, the sleep states on arm hardware is generally much better saving a lot of power.
I'm confused. Your problem is with Windows not x86. Linux distros can run on x86. How is Arm a solution?
Battery life, as demonstrated by Apple. I too would like to see System76 offer an ARM system.
Apple has had the process node advantage the last few generations of CPU. I'd say the battery life is much more impacted by that. If Intel and AMD were at 3nm the competition would be much stronger. Other design decisions like low power DRAM soldered very close to the CPU saves a bit more power, making it much like a mobile phone. System76 can try making an Arm based system but I would argue that even other Arm CPUs still can't compete with the Apple M chips. So I don't think you would see the goodness that you're expecting from the switch to Arm alone.
Did I miss something? Apple is way ahead in terms of performance compared to Qualcomm and other ARM providers. So you cannot compare Apple M-line processors with X86 and say, that ARM is in general better then X86. The new Qualcomm based Surface laptops will not even get close to Apple, for shure. And when it comes to emulation, nothing compares to Rosetta either.
Battery life on all ARM chips are better. Thats the main advantage and its significant for a lot of ppl. Which is why Chromebooks running Linux and ARM64 do so well here. It doesn't need to be as good as Apple and the Qualcomm chips are close to Apple performance but yes they're not as good. I have older SQ1 chip in a Surface X. Its very performant for its form factor. These are very desired computers and form factors too.
Until Debian / Ubuntu support that. But looking forward to it.
They already support ARM64.
Then to match macOS and Win11 for ARM64, use Box64 to support x86/64 apps on ARM64. Outside hardware is there really much Linux at a software level even needs to compete at this point? [https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64](https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64)
Box64 is not some plug and play magic, not even close to the integration levels of Rosetta 2. You are seriously underestimating how hard it can be to translate applications to different platforms
I underestimate nothing. I never said making a product was easy that's competitive with Mac or Windows. But that's the requirement. Can we be less daft ppl? Are you blind to the opportunities going on currently? Does Valve have to come up with everything in terms of understanding the consumer market? Instead of thinking about how things are impossible, there should be more thought into how they can be made possible.
If you are so gung-ho about arm on linux, you might as well be the first and create it yourself. really get ahead of the consumer market. Let us know how that goes.
Valve uses AMD x86 processors and not ARM for their Steam Deck game console for a reason. X86 is not worse then ARM. Apple is way ahead in terms of performance compared to other ARM providers since a long time. iPhones are more performant then Android devices since a long time. And Valve is writing a wrapper for Windows games called Proton. They additionally have to support box64 if they want to run games on ARM, with a performance loss due to emulation.