Comment by prezk
1 day ago
Linux will run on most platforms, so just pick up a fast, lightweight laptop, and select a conservative power profile for longer battery life and less heat, and don't run 32-thread machine learning jobs on it.
A 12-hour laptop battery life is a little bit of a red herring: yes, you can get it on efficient ultrabooks and MacBooks, with light use like web browsing or office work, on low brightness and minimal background apps. This is true on MacOS, Windows and Linux. The first two may be better at handling low power modes on hardware peripherals, but OTOH on Linux I have a better control over background tasks.
I have an absolute trash travel laptop from last decade, running Fedora Linux, and it lasts for multiple days if I keep it mostly closed and just open it for whatever browsing/editing I need on the road.
And how many laptops running Linux are light, power efficient, fast, quiet with good battery life?
My 16 inch M3 MacBook Pro runs 5 hours at 80% brightness doing development with my USB powered (video and power from one USB cord) portable monitor. The Mac battery is powering the monitor
https://a.co/d/gHqpcs3
Pretty much every laptop on the planet will run Linux. Maybe your optics are tinted because you seem to be a Mac person, and Linux support for newer Macs has known issues with low power modes.
I note how your 12+ hour claim was reduced to 5 hours when you actually put it to real work. It's still impressive, of course, but 5 hours aren't out of reach for Ryzen laptops either.
BTW, I have a RISC-V platform with 8 1.6GHz CPUs that uses under 5W under full load; on your 100Wh battery it would last for 20 hours. It's not a complete system, and performance lags behind Apple/Intel CPUs, but I think in few years RISC-V may take a bite out of both.
It’s not “running Linux” that’s the issue. It’s running Linux and getting good battery lifez
And a 1.6Ghz RISC V CPU isn’t exactly “fast” in 2026 or even 2021.
You noted that it was 5 hours when powering a second monitor from its USB port. Not just displaying video from the USB port, the monitor is getting power from the USB port.
How long do you think your 5 hour laptop would last powering an external display - again not just video out, also supplying power?
"Pretty much every laptop on the planet will run Linux."
Well, as long as you buy a Mac laptop that's at least 3 years old you'll be mostly..good. Unfortunately Apple isn't interested in helping Linux and everything has to be painfully reverse engineered and some stuff for M1 is still broken.
I personally don't care about battery life, there are power outlets around everywhere I'll be more than several hours.
Still, no one is getting that kind of battery life outside apple, just the way it is. If your existence revolves around battery life there's no substitute.
But note, this thread is about replacing Windows, and Wintel does not do as well as Apple either. So this thread is off-topic.