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You can buy refurb M1s for $379 at Walmart.

Has a proprietary bootloader that Apple can lock in an OTA update. Also doesn't support Linux as well as Intel or AMD chipsets, unfortunately.
Last I heard asahi ran pretty well on M1/M2. Is that not the case?
It runs well but battery life is quite a bit worse than on macos.
That’s not particularly surprising to be honest. A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software. Not trying to put it too poetically here, but that’s what it’s always seemed like to me.

In general when I install Linux on an Apple device I just assume there isn’t the same level of performance. I remember installing mint on a 2016 intel MBpro and the limitations/cons didn’t surprise me at all because I just kind of expected it to perform at 70% of what I expected from macOS but with far more free freedom/control. It ran very smoothly but you definitely lose a lot of functionality.

> A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software.

That's very cute, but it's not why Apple laptops run Linux poorly.

Apple Silicon has terrible and inefficient support because Apple released no documentation of their hardware. The driver efforts are all reverse-engineered and likely crippled by Apple's hidden trade secrets. This is why even Qualcomm chips run Linux better than Apple Silicon; they release documentation. Apple refuses, because then they can smugly pride themselves on "integration" and other plainly false catchisms.

And on Intel/AMD, Apple was well known for up-tuning their ACPI tables to prevent thermal throttling before the junction temp. This was an absolutely terrible decision on Apple's behalf, and led to other OSes misbehaving alongside constant overheating on macOS - my Intel Macs were regularly idling ~10-20c hotter than my other Intel machines.

i don't think either of those is really true?

https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/open-os-interop/

Literally the first step of the boot overview depends on a proprietary and irreplaceable Apple-controlled blob:

  iBoot2 loads the custom kernel, which is a build of m1n1
Apple decides whether or not m1n1 ever loads.
Only if you boot into macOS and connect it to the internet. iBoot2 never changes by itself, you, the user, decides if you want to boot into recovery or macOS and run an update.

So can Apple stop signing new iBoot2 versions? Sure! And that sucks. But it's a bit of FUD to claim that Apple at arbitrary points in time is going to brick your laptop with no option for you to prevent that.

Granted, if you boot both macOS and Asahi, then yes, you are in this predicament, but again, that is a choice. You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them.

> You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them

In other words, you're completely fucked if you brick your install. I consider iBoot a direct user-hostile downgrade from UEFI for this reason.

YMMV, but I would never trust my day-to-day on an iBoot machine. UEFI has no such limitations, and Apple is well-known for making controversial choices in OTA updates that users have no alternative to.

M1 mac minis or macbooks?
MacBook Air, though the $379 price does seem to be a Black Friday deal: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Restored-Apple-MacBook-Air-13-Lap...
Just note that listing is for an item from a third-party seller. Walmart's website includes listings from their third-party marketplace unless you explicitly filter them out.

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