Can anyone comment on how battery life compares when running Linux on M1/M2? (I haven't been a mac person in many many years but I do love the Air and would consider getting one now that I wouldn't have to use their os)
I've been running Asahi for a full year on my m2 air. The battery life is quite good. Yes, I think macOS has batter battery optimizations than linux, but compared to other laptops running linux it really is quite good.
I use daily both an MacBook Air m1 and x220. I have the 9 cell for the x220 and run Linux on it. Battery life for the most work (I do) is similar on both.
There are some interesting cases; running Docker drains the m1 (only ARM images) faster than the x220 and doing typescript work drains the x220 faster than the m1.
I have managed to achieve the same battery life, down minute differences in the single digit either side, between macOS and Linux on a MacBook Air (which is a simple all Intel machine).
I think the problem is that most distributions ship with no Powertop or udev rules, plus lots of unnecessary services and devices on by default.
One really nice thing Apple does is optimizing Safari for battery life. My comparison was Firefox on macOS vs Linux. With Safari, I'd get 20-30 min more.
I bet Firefox and other programs would benefit from some black-box GCC/LVM flag optimization to improve battery usage.
My Lenovo laptop gets better battery life under Linux than it did under Windows, and I've generally found the battery life estimations (for my use cases anyway) to be complete bullshit even under MacOS.
I'm excited to be able to upgrade to the M1 series Mac's as it sounds like I might actually get battery life, though I have the 2019 16" Pro and can't justify the upgrade just yet, even if that thing overheats with just a Slack video.
You will not get the battery life on Linux until GPU drivers are finished at the very least, and a bunch of other stuff.
If it's non-negotiable for you, I would suggest alternative options. There are now laptops with similar CPU performance and better GPU performance, with comparable battery life (I get 12 hours idle or browsing websites that aren't too demanding). It doesn't make sense to go with an M1 Mac as a Linux machine unless you really need it to be ARM.
I'm seeing incredible battery life in firefox on my M1 macbook air. Although maybe I just don't have high expectations after my linux based lenovo before this.
Anecdotal, but on an older 11" MacBook Air I have a dual-boot with elementary OS (Ubuntu derivative) and I get around 20-30% better battery life with Linux than OS X (using laptop-mode-tools etc). I think this is probably due to all the iCloud crap going on with OS X these days, but I have no proof of that.
I carry an M1 Macbook Air (for xcode) and an LG Gram 17 running Kubuntu for everything else (which is most of what I do). The Gram is probably the best laptop I've ever owned (it replaced an XPS-15) - it's bigger (13" vs 17"), lighter (2oz less than the air) and gets crazy life out of the battery.
When new, the Gram got 11-16 hours of battery (it now gets 8-10 hours) under development load (i.e running a node app, a go app and a Django backend, plus support servers). The Air hasn't been used as hard as the Gram, but it's battery gets similar performance. On the power management front, everything works on the air. On the Gram, hibernate is disabled, and sleep works (I've left the Gram in my bag over a three day weekend, and it was at about 20% on Tuesday when I opened it up). I ran Windows for about a week on the Gram and it did got less than eight hours of battery. No idea why.
I used my M1 MacBook Air last weekend with Asahi and GNOME on train ride for roughly 4 hours (browsing the web, fiddling with a server over ssh, writing a blog post) and when shutting it down, it was still at 78%.
This used to be different when I first installed Asahi, but the GPU driver and other improvements have made battery life something I don't really worry about anymore.
With some powertop tweaks battery life can be as good as in OS X. I do in fact get a bit more juice from Arch than from OS X in my MBA.
My setup is a very minimal on Arch, so the comparison is slightly unfair but it shows my point. OS X doesn't do any special magic. Linux can achieve equally low power consumptions with decent drivers and correct setup.
If you’re running Linux on a laptop, then yes, that’s even better. However, AFAIK nothing has battery life close to Macs. I’d consider one if they did.
My work Mac is perma-docked, but my personal Air spends most of its time on my lap, and I greatly value the battery life.
I used Linux on my desktop for many years and also on and off on my laptop but since I got an M1 laptop at my previous job and since bought one for personal use, the Linux/Windows x86 laptops just can't seem to compete for my use. As you mentioned, particularly battery life is stellar on the M1.
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