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Laptops Community

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Review: the NovaCustom V54 is an outstanding Linux laptop with Dasharo coreboot firmware – OSnews (www.osnews.com)
submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/laptops@lemmy.world
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[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Using an architecture other than x86 also simply isn’t an option for a lot of people, ruling out POWER9 and ARM hardware entirely.

I call bullshit on this.

My daily driver is an MNT Reform, which is an ARM machine, and I have no trouble finding software. All the stuff I need has been packaged for aarch64 / arm64. At this point, thanks to the popularity of the Raspberry Pi, ARM is pretty much as mainstream as x86 these day.

The only piece of software I couldn't find pre-built for ARM was an older version of Blender that could use my less-than-current-OpenGL GPU. Other than that, it's all there and ready to use as quickly and as easily as on x86.

I was the first to be surprised by this, but it's true: if you run an ARM laptop, you really won't miss out on anything. At least in Linux.

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

ARM is pretty much as mainstream as x86 these day.

Is this really true though? One major issue is dGPU performance (this is also relevant for WoA). On the windows side there is a lot of closed source software that cannot run natively on WoA (and emulation often has a significant list of bugs and issues).

[–] ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

One major issue is dGPU performance (this is also relevant for WoA).

That's true. But that's more a usability issue than an architecture incompatibility issue.

My compute module is a RK3588, which in the ARM world is considered high end, and it only compares favorably with an entry-level laptop of 5 years ago performance-wise - CPU or GPU. So with respect to price/performance, it's not there yet. But... well, it works as well as an entry-level laptop of 5 years ago, which is good enough for my meager needs.

If you need performance, you're limited to x86 because there is nothing equivalent in the ARM world yet. But that's not because the ecosystem isn't supported.

Note that the keyword here is yet: as more people buy ARM stuff, more powerful and cheaper ARM stuff will appear on the market. Chicken and egg.

lot of closed source software that cannot run natively on WoA

That's why I said "at least in Linux". And you're right, I probably should have added "for open-source software".

I haven't used Windows since 95, and I haven't used proprietary software for quite a number of years either, because the open-source offering is now good enough that I can credibly do all my computing without anything else. And so for my type of use, there is no significant hurdle running on ARM compared to x86.

But don't think I'm in an ultra-minority: more and more people only use open-source software nowadays, and they're not even power users anymore. It's that good now. So I didn't feel like mentioning it, because while it's not quite mainstream yet, it's common enough.

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

I use as much open source as I can (quality is generally better), but there are many line of business applications that don't work well on WoA, let alone Linux (x86 or ARM).

For open source only it works pretty well. I've been using ARM SBCs since 2018 and it's been great.

On desktop Linux/ARM, I am guessing there will be a lot of extra issues; drivers, problems with emulation of Windows games (independent of dGPU issues), limited support opportunities etc.