u/tornado99_

Having experimented a lot with Linux on Mac the following points are dealbreakers for me. Currently using Ventura (pre 2015 Macs) or Sequoia (post 2015 Macs), with OCLP, and will continue to do so until they are scrapped:

• Linux isn't actually faster. I see no evidence of this - comparing fresh install to fresh install
• Suspend doesn't work, or loses a lot of battery
• Instant wake gone
• Speakers sound worse, and the only real solution is buying an expensive reference microphone and building your own speaker correction profile
• Weird problems with T2 Macs like flashing touchbar
• Apple built the best machines in the world around mediocre hot processors (Intel)

Unless your Mac is extremely old I just don't see the point of Linux. The latest web browers still work on Ventura, and Sequoia. The only possible advantage might be security, but you're probably not installing a bunch of random software on an old Mac, and the browser itself should protect from online exploits.

Probably a wider point is how sensible it is to keep using the same computer for decades. Any machine without usb-c ports is already a bit annoying in the modern world. Not to mention improvements in WiFi standards, screen technology, etc.

Having used ARM chips (Apple and Qualcomm) on Mac, Windows, and Linux with their amazing low latency and battery life, the future is ARM.

https://preview.redd.it/9v88rb1wea0h1.png?width=2112&format=png&auto=webp&s=0eb0ed64862beddf3f62787867215ba2f855a9a1

Brave Nightly .deb has 30 icons in my App grid

It only has 1 entry in .local/share/applications

How I can fix this?

how to fix?

https://preview.redd.it/4mdasf7k970h1.png?width=2112&format=png&auto=webp&s=9699a6af8bab2043a0c18c336d0aaa2e93adb754

I'm a huge Ubuntu fan - having their own font+icons+theme+wallpaper makes it feel really cohesive. But I was wondering what options there are for people who don't like Ubuntu but still want that cohesion.

Of course many distros have a specific font but it's not one that was created specifically for that desktop environment.

And of course out of the 4 from my title, only one is a general purpose consumer OS.

So why don't more distros create/commission their own font?

Historical Note

KDE used to have a font - Oxygen

Gnome has a font but it's really just Inter with a certain character set chosen

(ps. this post was deleted from r/Linux, not sure why, so posting here)

As someone using ARM64 Ubuntu daily on an X Elite laptop, and also considering Asahi for my Macbook M1, here's a few thoughts I had on the two platforms.

Hardware

The X Elite is roughly equivalent to a MBP M2 in performance. The new X Elite 2 is roughly equivalent to a MBP M4. X Elite laptops often have 500 nit 120hz OLED screens (better than Mac), but no haptic touchpads and no smart speaker amplification like Asahi Audio. X Elite have generous specs (16/32GB RAM, 1TB storage), and previous gen models are under $1000.

Linux on X Elite

Since Jan 2026 everything works including sound, webcam, charge limit threshold, and usb-c displays. Support is extremely device dependent - basically only 3 laptops (2 Lenovo, 1 Dell) are daily driver level. Suspend technically works, but loses 4.5% battery an hour. Normal usage is now down to about 4W-7W power draw (low-moderate screen brightness). Unlike Asahi the webcam ISP hasn't been reverse engineered, so currently quality is acceptable but not great. Qualcomm's gpu driver Freedreno is open source and under active development.

Progress

Slow but steady, often driven by Qualcomm engineers themselves. Qualcomm's priorities are Windows on ARM and IoT Linux, but some of their engineers are Linux enthusiasts (such as Hans de Goede) and are allowed to do things which benefit desktop Linux too. Things like 4K120Hz, 3W power draw, 2-3% suspend loss, look to be mainlined for kernel 7.1 or 7.2.

The new X Elite 2 models from Lenovo have similar SoC to the 1st generation, so should get supported much more rapidly than the 2 years it took to get X1 to work well.

Future

Qualcomm may never be interested in explicitly supporting Desktop Linux, but unless they make radical changes to their architecture there shouldn't be any roadblocks. Probably their webcam ISP and speaker DSP will never be available, but as softISP matures and with the correct pipewire digital audio filters or Room Eq Wizard tuning, these aren't huge issues.

A Macbook Pro M2 with working usb c display support running Asahi is still superior to anything Qualcomm based. But it seems to me that when Linux is up and running on X2, probably this summer (e.g. Lenovo Slim 7x 2026) that may no longer be the case.

Summary

Asahi Linux is a Herculean feat of reverse-engineering to get Linux working on premium hardware, but improving it further and for new generations seems very hard. Ubuntu X Elite is a process of small patches (from both Qualcomm and the community) and configuration tweaks, with little reverse-engineering, that is slowly but constantly improving.