From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

This Hacker News discussion revolves around a user's decision to switch from an M1 MacBook to a ThinkBook running Arch Linux with the Omarchy distribution. The core themes that emerge are:

Linux vs. macOS: The "It Just Works" Debate

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the perceived stability and ease of use between Linux and macOS. Many users shared long-term experiences, with a recurring theme being that macOS generally offers a lower-effort, "it just works" experience, while Linux historically required more tinkering. However, there's a strong counter-narrative from users who find modern Linux distributions to be stable and even less demanding than Windows, with some stating Linux feels like less of a fight.

• "It just works. One thing I noticed lately is that sometimes a shortcut breaks, or something is not working anymore. This is also because Omarchy is just brand new, and I’m inexperienced running Linux as my main OS. But for the last 5 years with the M1, hardware-wise, things just worked." - andsoitis
• "My experience over two decades has been that running Linux is like having a car you need to spend every weekend in the garage tinkering with to keep running well. MacOS is lower effort." - andsoitis
• "While I also think Linux user experience becomes more and more "it just works", the incentives are such that a commercial experience like macOS is likely to always be a few levels above." - andsoitis
• "My early Linux experience involved a ton of manual configuration, documentation, and head scratching. But for the past 10 years or so, using Linux has felt like less of a fight than using Windows, and things have tended to "just work" for me." - khedoros1
• "I run Ubuntu and definitely never been easier. Practically boring." - NomDePlum
• "My experience is just the opposite: Linux requires more up-front tinkering, but once you get it into a shape you want, it tends to stay that way and get out of your way. Windows, by contrast, requires much more ongoing active maintenance, and previous releases were prone to simply shitting the bed without explanation or recourse. MacOS is better about this than Windows, but not as good as Linux." - bitwize
• "On the Mac far less so." - MrScruff (referring to UI inconsistency)
• "when I switched to OS X (long before it was macOS) because that's where all the and coming developer tools were, and I got tired of being sysadmin to my own Linux install as things break." - adastra22
• "But I have some issue with Nvidia drivers, or just stuck down a rabbit hole trying to configure a GUI the way I want, or whatever, and I give up and go back to macOS where everything is familiar and works out of the box. I'm too old and/or busy to deal with that shit, but it probably reflects my age more than it does macOS vs Linux." - adastra22
• "The PC didn't kill Desktop Linux, Mac did." - throwmeaway222
• "The OS just works. In fact, I moved from Linux to MacOS. I thought I’d miss i3 and sway but with Magnet and a launcher I don’t." - gigatexal

Arch Linux: Tinkering vs. Stability and The Omarchy Distribution

The specific choice of Arch Linux (and the Omarchy setup) sparks debate about its reputation for requiring manual intervention and its stability. Some users defend Arch, stating it's rare for things to break without warning and that issues are usually easily fixable. Others highlight that while Arch itself requires effort, distributions like Debian, Slackware, and Void are more stable. Omarchy is seen by some as a way to bypass the initial setup pain of Arch.

• "Now if you're talking Arch Linux... sure. The Arch devs love yanking the carpet out from under you and then telling you "you should have read that forum post from a week ago if you didn't want your system to break"." - bitwize
• "Has Arch gotten much worse recently or something? When I used it they were pretty good about posting “manual intervention required” when needed on the front page of their site." - bee_rider
• "It hasn’t. I can’t remember a “rug pull” in the last 10 years. People forget arch packages are pretty much as close to upstream as you can get, the arch packagers tend to do as little as possible." - WD-42
• "A little warning message or update inside pacman would be a real nice QoL improvement." - deafpolygon
• "Not at all. Also usually when things break you can just Google and fix it within a few minutes. It's not the hours of debugging why grub suddenly broke or X isn't starting anymore it was long ago." - herbst
• "So... Linux requires more up-front tinkering, but once you get it into a shape you want, it tends to stay that way and get out of your way. Windows, by contrast, requires much more ongoing active maintenance, and previous releases were prone to simply shitting the bed without explanation or recourse. MacOS is better about this than Windows, but not as good as Linux." - bitwize
• "Omarchy never made much sense to me. The biggest benefit of Arch is that it's hackable and you can set it up exactly as you want it.. so why skip the entire process that teaches you how to do that?" - AstroBen
• "Because some of us want that minimalism and a good “power user” default setup to tweak from there. I spent all of the 90s learning Linux deeply and custom tweaking everything and trying everything posted to freshmeat.net. I bootstrapped my own Linux from scratch before LFS was a thing. Now I just want to get work down on an OS that feels like it belongs to power users and closely matches my deployment targets. This is why I switched to Omarchy." - runjake
• "It's just my experience, but it seems like nearly all younger people (<= 20s) don't want to deep dive on stuff like Linux or TCP/IP, they want to know enough to be effective (dangerous?) and move onto chasing basic competency in the next technology." - runjake
• "People like Arch because it serves the purpose of blank slate pretty well and doesn’t have ancient package problems. It’s easier to build something like Omarchy for Arch than it would be for more opinionated distros." - cosmic_cheese
• "Why waste time getting what you want starting from the bad defaults when you can do exactly the same starting with better defaults set up by someone else?" - eviks
• "It's pretty much ALL Omarchy. If you install Arch by itself you get a tty prompt... and that's about it. Omarchy looks super impressive. Haven't used it myself, but the scripts and dotfiles in the Github repo (https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy) have been inspiring" - slashnode
• "How confident are people that Omarchy will be well maintained in the future? I'm considering making that same switch from MacOS to Arch, but I'm not sure if I should have confidence in something like Omarchy which is relatively new." - joshdavham
• "Why does it need to be maintained? It's just an install script to install common apps on Arch and to install and configure Hyprland. It's not really a distro on its own." - dismalaf
• "Best thing about Omarchy is that is just a set of config files for Hyprland and Waybar plus bash scripts (even the screensaver is a bash script running in fullscreen )" - nomdep

macOS Hardware Strengths: Trackpad, Screen, Build Quality, and Ecosystem

A strong consensus emerges regarding the superiority of Apple's hardware, particularly the trackpad, screen quality, build materials, and overall feel. Many users who have switched from Linux to macOS cite these hardware advantages as major drawcards, even if they have reservations about the OS itself. Conversely, discussions about PC hardware often highlight inconsistencies or compromises made at similar price points.

• "The trackpad on my X1 Nano (and the associated Linux experience) is a daily annoyance to me compared to the macOS+M1 MacBook Air experience. I have way more accidental touches, drags, wrong palm detection, etc." - rkomorn
• "No one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad." - throwmeaway222
• "The Mac sucks in the winter. The PC sucks in the summer. The PC is however entirely unusable due to that without plugging an external mouse and keyboard in which is the problem." - crinkly
• "My M4 Max under full load for audio transcode required manual fan curve changes to get the temperature down from 110º C (yes, it really got that hot) to 95º C (much better)." - numpy-thagoras
• "I have owned a hell of a lot of laptops and MacBooks are the best, not because of Mac, but because of the build quality. The touchpad is perfect, the aluminum body is rugged, the screen is amazing, and the audio truly is sorcery thanks to Apple acquiring Beat’s audionet." - reactordev
• "The screen : at an equivalent price point (and even more), nothing comes close to Apple screens. The cheapest MacBook have a better screen than most high end PCs." - pjerem
• "Also durability. I’m shocked that something that looks so good can withstand by downright abuse. I hold my MacBook Pro with one hand and fling it around and I’ve lost track of the number of times it has fallen down." - me551ah
• "What the fuck are you talking about. A current high end laptop CPU is the AMD 9955HX3D, with Geekbench 6 of 3161/19080 geekbench. M4 Pro is 3812/20076. Why do I worship apple silicon? Because it’s literally the best performing processor for a laptop on the planet. I can use it for a full day of work from the couch on battery, no performance hit, RAM maxed out, containers running, the fans never turn on, and it barely even gets warm." - anon7000
• "The point is that Apple's magic trackpad actually works great on Linux too. Smooth, responsive. accurate, multi touch and gestures, and all the rest. Just works. More or less exactly like it does on a mac. Too bad the blueooth stack on Linux is a bit unstable. Lots of issues with stuff randomly not connecting. Which of course isn't great with a trackpad." - jillesvangurp
• "But the reason I went back to the mac is the hardware. Intel/AMD laptops are so completely miserably dreadful these days. Apple makes great hardware. Great screens, keyboard, trackpads, CPUs, etc. You always end up compromising on at least a few of these. It will have a great CPU but a shit screen. Or it will be overheating all the time and have a loud fan. Or weigh 10 kilos. Or have a lot of blinking leds and a fugly formfactor. It's always something." - jillesvangurp
• "You simply can't compare anything to MacBooks. I had a Dell that I paid about $2,000 for, and it was really good (or so I thought). Then at work, I got a MacBook Pro, and that's when I saw the difference." - mirzap
• "MacBooks are great laptops until the day they break and you are out of warranty; or you are in warranty and Apple in its infinite wisdom and power decides they are not going to honour that repair. So MacBooks are laptops which you use with the constant hope that it doesn't break." - crossroadsguy
• "But hardware wise, I’d much prefer an m4 to an x86 thinkpad." - eptcyka
• "The same that fill FOSDEM corridors with MacBooks, despite the main purpose of the whole weekend, or at least how its roots were almost 30 years ago." - pjmlp
• "The trackpads are second to none. So are the speakers. The screen are pretty good. I wish mine got even brighter but the m4s do. The keyboard is finally awesome." - gigatexal
• "Which $600 model has an OLED screen? ... This one is very similar. I bought mine from Thailand ... This has a WXUGA display, i.e. 1920x1200. It’s not comparable to the high DPI display on the MacBook Pro." - alecthomas, ozgrakkurt, foldr
• "My X220 from 2012 also runs fine. I use now use a X13 because AMD Zen3+ is faster and provides much more battery runtime. This stuff last long: Build quality, regarding chassis and screws. Replacement parts are available. Hardware maintenance manual is available. A broken palm rest is something fixable." - ho_schi
• "So from my experience a 5 year lifetime for a macbook is really nothing special and definitely not "crazy good"." - cycomanic
• "The same that fill FOSDEM corridors with MacBooks, despite the main purpose of the whole weekend, or at least how its roots were almost 30 years ago." - pjmlp

ARM vs. x86 and Battery Life on Laptops

The transition to Apple Silicon (ARM) for laptops is a prominent theme, with many users appreciating the power efficiency and performance. This leads to comparisons with x86 laptops, where battery life and thermal management are often cited as pain points. The search for a "good Linux laptop" with excellent battery life remains a challenge, with suggestions leaning towards specific ThinkPad models and highlighting the limitations of ARM support on Linux.

• "The dream: an Arch-friendly laptop that runs as cool as Apple Silicon, with Apple's monitor, Apple's trackpad, Apple's audio. Ask HN: What am I looking for?" - gtsnexp
• "macbook + asahi" - ulbu
• "Has Asahi reached maturity yet?" - gtsnexp
• "Stay away from ARM laptops and SoCs, they aren't there yet when it comes to Linux. If you like to tinker, but expect hardware to just not work, or worse, you'll get stuck on a kernel fork that never gets updated." - heavyset_go
• "If you want a good Linux machine, buy one from a vendor that explicitly sells and supports machines with Linux on them. IMO you can tinker as much as you want without forcing hardware compatibility issues upon yourself in order to have something to tinker with." - heavyset_go
• "A recent ThinkPad with one of the latest AMD Ryzen U CPUs should have a very decent battery life. You just need some custom udev rules to set the right power saving states for different devices. Powertop should make this straightforward. IMHO, this is a great compromise, because you stay on x86_64 and Linux, you get within 3/4 of ARM's power efficiency, and hardware support is perfect. I've squeezed more than 11 hours from some models." - nextos
• "Also, ARM support for Linux desktops is still very very limited and buggy." - f311a
• "So... Linux is fast. Few years ago I wanted to run Linux and used my MacBook Air 2013 (one of the best machines I’ve had). It was amazing how Ubuntu ran so sleek especially comparing to the MacBook Pro 2018 with macOS. x86_64 feels less portable than arm. Since I got MBP from my work I’ve also got another machine for Windows. I’ve went with 13” MSI Perstige with 125H which was the latest back then offering hybrid cores (performance + economy). It’s 1kg is amazing and the OLED is also nice. But in order for the machine to actually compile and be snappy I need to ensure it’s not dropping to 0.4-0.8Ghz and then it easily gets warm and noisy." - rock_artist
• "I desperately want to move to a Linux laptop (I run it on every desktop PC I own, and I hate that I have to deal with a locked-down system). There's no price point that buys you even close to what an entry-level Macbook Air offers, not only in terms of battery life, but also weight, screen quality and keyboard." - codeflo

Tiling Window Managers and Productivity

The discussion touches upon the benefits of tiling window managers on Linux (like Sway, Hyprland) for productivity, offering customizablity and efficient window management. Some users express surprise that macOS doesn't offer more native support for these workflows, relying on third-party tools.

• "I think the biggest takeaway from this blog post is that developers and other professionals should take more note of the tiling window managers available on Linux like Sway and Hyprland - they are insanely fast and customizable to exactly what we need to be more productive." - jasoneckert
• "I'm a Sway user (ironically on Fedora Asahi Remix on a Mac) and I won't have it any other sway... er... I mean way." - jasoneckert
• "To me it’s not even the tiling. It’s the ability to switch focus to windows in a directional manner. Like super hjkl or whatever. I have no idea how people are still using alt tab in 2025." - WD-42
• "I just wish Apple would let us have instant workspace navigation. It is pretty much the only reason why I wrestle with getting Yabai working on every major OS update. There is “reduced animation” setting but it has a short fade in-and-out animation and it drives me crazy." - creakingstairs
• "There are projects to go even further and you don’t have to leave MacOS for all the tiling love. ... But I get basically everything I need with Magnet." - gigatexal

Perceived vs. Actual "It Just Works" and User Experience

This theme explores the subjective nature of "it just works." While macOS is often lauded for this, some users find its UI unintuitive or frustrating, especially when coming from Linux. Conversely, while Linux might require more initial setup, once configured, it can be highly predictable. The discussion also touches on how user age and experience influence these perceptions, with some suggesting that younger users may be less inclined to engage in deep system tinkering.

• "It depends. I've been running Debian since 2020-ish. I picked my hardware to run Linux. Nothing much changed for me between Debian 10 and 13 tbh." - extraisland
• "I've been using Linux since high school in the 90's, through all the way to the late 00's. I switched to OS X (long before it was macOS) because that's where all the and coming developer tools were, and I got tired of being sysadmin to my own Linux install as things break." - adastra22
• "But I have some issue with Nvidia drivers, or just stuck down a rabbit hole trying to configure a GUI the way I want, or whatever, and I give up and go back to macOS where everything is familiar and works out of the box. I'm too old and/or busy to deal with that shit, but it probably reflects my age more than it does macOS vs Linux." - adastra22
• "Maybe I‘m missing some functionality or just didn’t take the time to get used to it - stuff needed to get done ;)" - phkx (after struggling with Hyprland for paperwork)
• "My point is, it was available on iPhone. And has always been the case but people brush it off because it was an Smartphone SoC." - ksec (regarding Apple Silicon performance)
• "It’s so stupid because I’m a die hard linux user but I can definitely appreciate my Apple devices." - dijit
• "Why? Clearly the Commodore 64 has much fewer resources, but it feels so much nicer to write text on a Commodore 64. Not because of the keyboard (I have a better one), not because of the processor (because it’s a weaker one). But because the latency of typing is so low that it is barely perceptible and that goes directly against the specification. One cannot infer user experience from spec sheets." - dijit
• "The same with battery life, if you listen to apple fanboys you get the impression that battery life above 5h was simply unheard off until the M1 came along. I had a x200 in 2009 or 2010 that was giving me 10h+ in the large battery and I could even swap over to the smaller one to get another 6h (?) or so." - cycomanic
• "I don't know what he's talking about. I’ve not had a Mac last less than 7 years as a main workhorse, and my 2014 first generation 5k 27” is still going strong as a living room machine. It could still be my daily driver to be honest." - simonh
• "Maybe I’m missing some functionality or just didn’t take the time to get used to it - stuff needed to get done ;)" - phkx (after struggling with Hyprland for paperwork)
• "It's only 2-3 weeks in total that I run it full time." - deafpolygon (referring to Omarchy)
• "Oh. Still in the honeymoon phase." - deafpolygon (replying to the above)
• "I'm not some Apple fanboy... However, there isn't a day that passes without screen freezes during peak usage, and I need to reboot every day or two. This happens despite having 32GB of RAM, an RTX 4060, and a Ryzen 5 7600. That never happens with my 5-year-old MacBook Air." - mirzap
• "The same happened with me going from Linux to Mac. I thought I’d miss i3 and sway but with Magnet and a launcher I don’t." - gigatexal
• "The PC didn't kill Desktop Linux, Mac did." - throwmeaway222

Hardware Compatibility and Driver Support (Especially on ARM)

The discussion highlights the ongoing challenges of hardware compatibility with Linux, particularly concerning ARM processors. While significant progress has been made, users report that certain components or features might not work out-of-the-box, necessitating manual configuration or workarounds. The lack of consistent, high-quality drivers for various PC hardware components is also a recurring complaint.

• "When I used it they were pretty good about posting “manual intervention required” when needed on the front page of their site." - bee_rider (referring to Arch)
• "My early Linux experience involved a ton of manual configuration, documentation, and head scratching." - khedoros1
• "But if you have a bog standard desktop or laptop it will work. The biggest problem with Linux tbh is that if you aren't using Gnome or KDE, the UI is just bit jank in some places." - extraisland
• "But I have some issue with Nvidia drivers, or just stuck down a rabbit hole trying to configure a GUI the way I want, or whatever, and I give up and go back to macOS where everything is familiar and works out of the box." - adastra22
• "I tried Asahi Linux and also tried to find some non apple machines including with Snapdragon X Elite ones but so far I haven't found anything with good battery life and a decent linux driver support." - harshitaneja
• "Stay away from ARM laptops and SoCs, they aren't there yet when it comes to Linux. If you like to tinker, but expect hardware to just not work, or worse, you'll get stuck on a kernel fork that never gets updated." - heavyset_go
• "The issue is that trackpads from other manufacturers just seem to be universally really, really bad in comparison to Apple's hardware. Particularly anything produced by Synaptics that I've had the displeasure of using is just mediocre shit in comparison. And they seem to dominate the market. It seems like they just gave up even trying to compete." - jillesvangurp
• "I can't really justify spending a lot of time trying to get things like GPUs. sound, touchId sensors, etc. to work. And I would expect having issues with all of that." - jillesvangurp
• "The Windows drivers ecosystem is a mess, manufacturers don't care to develop or maintain drivers beyond the "get the product out of the door" phase." - ezst(This is a point about Windows, but relevant to the driver discussion)
• "Linux is more likely to have to deal with something like poor/nonexistent drivers that mean a device consumes extra power compared to Windows." - bee_rider
• "Unfortunately, at the behest of Microsoft, manufacturers just came out with s2idle suspend and removed s3 suspend. And it seems the only Microsoft has working support… so sleep issues continue to plague linux… again… after we just solved them." - dijit
• "I was using arch a lot back around 2016, and it was a nightmare. On every kernel update had to recompile a kernel driver cause my laptops chipset was something bizarre, nvidia drivers were mostly half working and it all just felt like a fragile card house." - sauercrowd
• "I still prefer my 5-year old 4K oled xps. ... But the Lenovo screen isn’t as good, though." - christophilus (comparing to a MacBook, but within context of PC hardware)
• "I've had to repair far more thinkpads than I have had to get macbooks repaired, the batteries last longer on macbooks." - eptcyka
• "I can't really justify spending a lot of time trying to get things like GPUs. sound, touchId sensors, etc. to work. And I would expect having issues with all of that." - jillesvangurp
• "I run Linux on every desktop PC I own, and I hate that I have to deal with a locked-down system. I've tried more laptops than is probably financially healthy for me. There's no price point that buys you even close to what an entry-level Macbook Air offers, not only in terms of battery life, but also weight, screen quality and keyboard." - codeflo
• "The battery life on my m3 max mbpro I only wish was the larger screen one and not the 13 inch one … oh well. But I suspect it will last me — and be passed down as well — 8-10 years as well." - gigatexal
• "But in a pinch, I can live with a decent Linux laptop. I'd probably go for something a bit more premium if I had to go there these days. But Arch/Manjaro are great and do everything I need and I vastly prefer that over Windows." - jillesvangurp
• "I'm also not claiming 11 years is "crazy good" either. On the opposite side though, I don't like giving old machines to non-techies. I'm actually planning to get rid of that 2014 MBP since it's sat plugged in but basically unused for 4 years, but I don't like the idea of a non-techie taking it and not getting security updates." - socalgal2
• "I used it for about half a year. I still have it and it runs Manjaro. From a software point of view, I can do anything I need to do on it that I would normally use a mac for and I'm actually completely fine with using it for work." - jillesvangurp (referring to a Samsung laptop)
• "My X220 from 2012 also runs fine. I use now use a X13 because AMD Zen3+ is faster and provides much more battery runtime. This stuff last long: Build quality, regarding chassis and screws. Replacement parts are available. Hardware maintenance manual is available. A broken palm rest is something fixable." - ho_schi
• "The biggest issue of ThinkPads is that the L-Series can be purchased (same hardware, bad chassis) and that bad panels can be ordered. Recently Lenovo removed the HiDPI panel option from the X13. Which is the worst possible idea. Another dumb idea is the ugly and useless camera bump protruding from the panel." - ho_schi
• "The MBP 2021 also shows age. But even with more frequent fans and 80% of original battery it outperform the younger MSI since day one." - rock_artist
• "When I was typing on a Commodore 64 it is so immediate… there is no lag in typing, the words appear on the screen as quickly as they are pressed, it feels mechanical. It feels immediate. it feels direct." - dijit
• "At work, my Thinkpad from 2021 is still holding on, and has higher specs than entry level MacBooks from 2025." - pjmlp
• "The same upgrade on a T480s was a bigger improvement. Compared to my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) the trackpads of my ThinkPads are always worse." - junga