A RISC-V chip dozens of times more powerful than the Apollo computer can be found for under $5.

True. :(

At least for the last 10 years.

M1 works decently with Linux these days but anything newer than that barely works.

I was thinking Intel era given the price-point.

Horrible cooling is the last couple of years of Intel MacBooks. Nothing to do with Linux.

If you run them with a “balanced profile in Linux, they run a bit slower but the fan stays quiet. It is probably what macOS does.

Before 2019 or so, they run awesome. I mean, the newer ones are faster so they run great too even in balanced. I guess it depends what you pay for them.

The older ones are crazy cheap these days and, in my view, great value.

I have six MacBook Pro / MacBook Air computers. They all run flawlessly. Everything works. Everything, including all the social keys (screen, volume, etc). I do not have any of the problems described.

I daily drive more than one of them.

The best OS, in my view, for these machines is EndeavourOS, especially if you have one new enough to have a T2 chip. That said, I also have a 2020 MacBook Air running EndeavourOS. Absolutely everything works and it is quite fast but the fan will get quite loud (unlike any of my other machines). I have been meaning to replace the thermal paste in the hopes that it helps. I tend to use the older ones more as they do not have this issue.

My recommendation would be to go for machines before 2020. The MacBook Air 2013 - 2017 is the absolute best bang for buck.

I picked up a 2013 for $50 two years ago for a backpacking trip hoping I could use it for email and not caring if it was lost or stolen. I used it for 4 hours yesterday including for a Microsoft Teams meeting.

US sanctions massively setback RISC-V.

We would have had the Milk-V OASIS last year , something better by now, and the answer to “as good as ARM” would be yes.

But Sophgo, the company making the SoC was accused of helping Huawei get access to restricted technology. So TSMC refused to make their chips. And the Milk-V OASIS was cancelled.

Massive blow to RISC-V.

People are going to say Thinkpad but I am going to say 2013 to 2017 MacBook Air. Inexpensive. Light. Good looking. A joy to use. Faster than you think. And well supported under Linux (I use EndeavourOS on them myself).

This seems to be positioning Ubuntu as a data center OS. There are several RVA23 chips due out but they are all for the data center (tenstorrent, Alibaba, ventana, etc).

There is the SiFive P870 but I do not think anybody has licensed that so it may never get made.

I have also heard rumours of Expressif chips but I do not know the details.

Agree on the Linux. You do not need the GNU though.

Chimera Linux is based in Spain. Maybe use that.

When I switched my mother, her only complaint was that the scroll bars were not as wide in Facebook.

My mother, 80 years old, uses Linux Mint.

It is a myth that Windows is easier to use than Windows. It is just what you know and it came with your computer.

I will believe it when I see it for China. They will probably just keep pirating Windows.

India is at something like 15% Linux though and probably going up.

As one practical example, a malicious program may monitor your key presses to extract your passwords (in web browsers or sudo).

Or it could be taking screenshots behind the scenes and sending that data remotely or to a local AI.

Or turning on your mic and….

The digital dependence on the US is much like the energy dependence on Russia.

Europe is ditching Russian energy. They may ditch US tech.

“It’s more like gnu”

You are correct. GNU has the bad habit of only working with itself as well. Systemd only works with Glibc so it fits in well.

The reality is that GNU is just a subset of the Red Hat Linux platform these days. Systemd is another part. GNOME is the other big chunk. They are all designed to work with each other and do not care if they work with anything else.

You cannot even decouple SystemD from Glibc, never mind separating the various components from each other. It is a bunch of processes but it is designed as a monolith.

Though I see Systemd as an improvement, I still do not like it.

The Chimera Linux FAQ captures my thoughts quite well:

https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq#what-is-the-projects-take-on-systemd

One of the ironies with System76 is that they are taking so long to release their Wayland-only desktop that they are becoming one of the last bastions of Xorg.

I am confused. Autoclicker does not work?

https://github.com/konkitoman/autoclicker

Or do you mean keyboard input?

https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool

Accessibility is better than reported on Wayland. It is being taken seriously.