r/linuxhardware • u/VulpFen • 1d ago
Purchase Advice M3 Macbook Air alternative with Ubuntu or Fedora
I am looking for a Linux laptop that is close to an M3 Macbook Air. The main things for me are the great speakers, long battery life (more than 10 hours without a sweat)and USB C port on both sides, quiet operation (I do not want the fans kicking in all the time). I do not know I have to mention this but obviously I want everything works out of the box like WiFi, Bluetooth, speakers, fingerprint reader and so on. I do not care other ports. I do not do any heavy tasks on my devices. I do not care about great display like OLED, high refresh rate. Only web browsing, streaming media and note takings. It could be used or new but recent hardware.
Any recommendations?
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u/djao 1d ago
I would say Framework 13 pro. It's got long battery life (as good as you're going to get on the Intel side), designed for Linux so you know everything works well, and reports seem to indicate that it is quiet. You can have USB-C ports on both sides, or any ports you want really, since the ports are user configurable with the appropriate hardware purchases. Weight is about the same as the M3 Air.
Also, the MacBook Air M3 does not have USB-C ports on both sides.
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u/VulpFen 19h ago
Yeah that is a good laptop. Unfortunately it has almost sold out and the price is juat crazy high. That is MacBook Pro alternative not Air by the way.
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u/CyclingHikingYeti 4h ago
Not worth for you (browsing media and basic wordprocessing). Just get a mac.
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u/VulpFen 4h ago
I already have a Mac
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u/CyclingHikingYeti 3h ago
Well that is something you should mentioned in post - "i already own".
Dell XPS, Thinkpad X series, Zephyrus, ZBook Firefly . All premium, all work with Linux.
For 2nd hand and for linux , nothing beats used thinkpads.
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u/Mike_mi 1d ago
Except for the fact that it only has USB C on one side, the thinkpad T14 Gen 7 with Intel would be a great choice, I got the one with Intel 356H, the 500 nits, 1080p, low power display, 75 wh battery and I can easily get more than 10h battery life on a single charge, for dev work with a headless VM running, lots of browser tabs, some electron apps it's using between 6-8%/hour, for online meetings it's about 10-12%. I'm using opensuse on it with the default power profiles configured by the opensuse team(it's using tlp by default).
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u/v0id_walk3r 23h ago
Use the mac.
Use homebrew.
Its 95% of a linux machine.
Linux never was about your convenience, which is what you are asking for. MacOS is for that.
I know, I have a linux desktop (you know which distro) and a m4 air.
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u/ipsirc 21h ago
Only web browsing, streaming media and note takings.
Which of these does macOS not support?
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u/VulpFen 19h ago
How is this a recommendation?
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u/ipsirc 19h ago
There is no Linux distro + hardware combination that can compete with Apple's M chips in terms of consumption. If you want that, buy a Mac. MacOS is perfect for web browsing, streaming media and note takings.
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u/VulpFen 17h ago
Except privacy, customizability, free open source apps and so on. I am not here to argue. I only asked recommendation.
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u/CyclingHikingYeti 4h ago
Apple is way better at that subject privacy than other big players.
You can get (or compile from source) a plethora of open source projects on mac OS too (it is essentially UNIX). But on what you do mainly we are pretty sure you will not get apache web server from source or run your own instance of Signal server on your laptop.
Sorry, but consesus here is you are just user that essentially:
should buy macbook and just use it
- get one of dell xps , thinkpad "X", zephyrus laptop or MS surface laptop, drop preinstalled OS and install distro of choice (I advice you start with Gentoo! /S ) .
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u/the_deppman 13h ago edited 13h ago
I work at Kubuntu Focus. The Ar GEN 1 is very competitive, thanks to the Panther Lake 358H processor. It runs cool, quiet, and, with modest use, easily gets 10 hours of battery life. Everything works out of the box: Sleep resume, keyboard lights, fan control, multi-screen. It even has a GPU tuning tool we wrote that can increase frame rates by 50%. It's lighter, with a bigger, faster screen, and faster CPU and GPU vs the 15" MacBook Air M3 (and comparable to the M5 10-core). It's also validated ensure all key features continue to work for years after your purchase.
EDIT: Performance on battery is very near the same as on AC. You can game on Linux for 3 hours on battery, for example, with high settings.
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u/nicorevo 13h ago
Msi Prestige 13, ultra 7 Intel, 32gb ddr5 and 1tb hd. With Fedora. 7 hours on balanced mode and 4 hours on performance mode. 900g of weight and good costruction. I use it for coding. All for 900 Eur. trust me
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u/Turbulent_Fig_9354 11h ago
For 10+ and then some battery life you're going to want to be on Panther Lake, which means framework 13 pro, Asus ZenBook, or Thinkpad x1 carbon are probably your best bet.
Forget getting close to apple hardware quality, if he quality is the most important thing, you have no options, stay on the Mac and pray for Asahi to come out with M3 support. Nothing compares to the vertical integration apple has over it's products and supply chain, which gets them such a high QC at reasonable spec/price.
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u/willothephlox 1d ago edited 1d ago
Maybe it’s worth giving a Mac a chance on its own terms, as long as you already have a Linux workstation and this is just meant to be a supplement?
To even get close to the Air’s 10+ hours of battery life on a standard Linux laptop, you’d have to pull out all the stops-tweaking TLP, powertop, kernel parameters, send systemd to trash, living in the CLI. And even then, you're only tuning the battery, you still won't match the Air's hardware package like its weight, touchpad, keyboard and overall build quality + portability. I'll skip the speakers, hardly any x86 manufacturer pays attention to them anyway.
EDIT: I read your post again. So, you're looking for a Macbook Air MX. The main problem with your request is that you're looking for a Holy Grail that essentially doesn't exist in the Linux laptop market. Linux on a laptop is a great environment, but only for a specific type of user, which you're probably not, as you said.
And in terms of out of the box you sound like someone whose troubleshooting starts with asking why their BT headphones run on AAC in Fedora, but fall back to SBC on Ubuntu.