Comment by ndiddy

2 months ago

This board uses the CIX CP8180 SoC, which has worse performance and significantly worse efficiency than even Apple's M1 chip. See Jeff Geerling's review of a desktop with this SoC: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-ent... If you need an ARM Linux laptop, it's probably a better choice to get a used M1 or M2 MacBook Pro and put Fedora Asahi on it.

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ndiddy

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cmrdporcupine  2 months ago

Yeah, or if you don't mind something with performance this low, the RK3588 has much better kernel support (I have a couple here) and there's some companies offering laptop format for those now.

But as much as I love the RK3588 it's very much in the "low perf utility SBC" world than "good performing general PC". I use my two boards for NAS, Plex, Forgejo CI builders, etc.

I do recall that Jeff Geerling I think had some followup with that board that perhaps there could be firmware changes that improve the power efficiency later maybe?

  • bpye  2 months ago

    I have an MNT Pocket Reform with an RK3588 and I do like the device, but yeah, it can be a little sluggish at times.

    It is very usable for email, editing documents, code review, etc - but it will struggle if you're trying to multitask heavily.

    This CIX SoC is a fair bit faster than the RK3588 though I believe.

nottorp  2 months ago

But has Asashi managed to have support for bells and whistles like graphics acceleration and sleep by now?

This SoC may actually have Linux drivers.

beeflet  2 months ago

Asashi is a project built on sand. I'm not giving apple a dime

  • Melonai  2 months ago

    Maybe, but it works quite well for me, so to each their own! :)

    Can't seem to get DP Alt Mode to work on my used 2021 M1 Pro though, even though it's listed as supported with an asterisk, maybe someone here has managed it?

    (Also, if you're buying used and wiping MacOS are you truly giving Apple a dime? I guess it's a matter of perspective.)

  • nine_k  2 months ago

    Don't give Apple a dime, buy second-hand Apple hardware. Asahi can make a lot of sense on a Mac Mini, where proper sleep is not that important, but which could be an excellent small build server or a local ML inference box, for rather moderate money.

chrisweekly  2 months ago

Apple hardware, yes. Fedora Asahi, maybe. OrbStack^1 provides awesome flexibility and DX/UX, w/ minimal footprint.

1. https://orbstack.dev/

  • metadat  2 months ago

    Orbstack is just a less bug-ridden implementation of Docker4Mac, not really pertinent or earth shattering for running desktop apps on the daily.

    What's wrong with Asahi?

    • dpc_01234  2 months ago

      Is _everything_ working? Last time I put Linux on a x86_64 Air Book I was given for free, everything was working _except_ resume from suspend would crash and reboot the system, and from the reading on it, it seems it is a know issue due to T4 security chip or something. Made me believe that if older chips doesn't yet work, the newer ones probably have more caveats. Or am I wrong?

      Generally I'm reluctant investing in Linux on a hardware from company more or less hostile to it, but I also don't have any need for ARM laptop, and I'm happy with my Framework.

      8 replies →

    • chrisweekly  2 months ago

      Whoops, mea culpa. I'm not personally very interested in desktop linux GUI apps, and hadn't realized that was out of scope for Orb's featureset. Given my narrower criteria for "linux support" (VMs for CLI-based operations), Orb has been amazing. Its capabilities exceed that of Docker4Mac beyond stability and performance. But, yeah, that may be moot in light of your desktop GUI purposes. I have no experience w Asahi.