Arch Linux

DrKillPatient

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 85

Performance on a Macbook: Arch & OSX

I've recently installed Arch on my desktop at home over the summer and it's been an excellent experience. I learned more about Linux in two weeks of using Arch than I did in months of Ubuntu or Mint. Now that I'm somewhat comfortable with Arch, I'd like to install it on my Macbook that I use for schoolwork; perhaps with a dual-boot so that I can temporarily fall back to OSX if I horribly break something. I feel much more productive with it because I can install only the applications that I need, without what seems now to be useless bloat on OSX. I've heard that OSX is fast(er) on Apple computers because it's optimized precisely for the hardware.

My question is, if I install Arch on my Macbook, how well will it go? Will it end up sluggish because the hardware is uncommon/optimized only for Apple's OS, or something of the sort? I've seen no indication of it on the ArchWiki, so I assume that's not the case, but I wonder if anyone here has personal experience with doing so? If so, are there any specific things that I need to pay attention to as opposed to installing on a 'regular' computer, and so on? In short, how is the install and performance of Arch on a Macbook compared to other non-Mac computers?

litemotiv

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2008-08-01

Posts: 5,026

Re: Performance on a Macbook: Arch & OSX

Welcome to the forums DrKillPatient. Arch runs great on most Macbooks, performance will generally be the same or perhaps even better than on OSX (depending on which software you choose to install). The only thing that is generally a little lacking on linux is battery life, since OSX keeps track of more hardware monitors than linux and has some specific battery saving functions in it's drivers. You can expect roughly 10-15% less battery life compared to OSX.

If you follow the instructions in the wiki you will probably have Arch up and running in no time.

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DrKillPatient

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 85

Re: Performance on a Macbook: Arch & OSX

Is the 10-15% decrease a sort of 'average' with Linux in general, or Arch specific? I was thinking of sticking to lightweight/terminal applications and a simple WM like Openbox if I use Arch. If that's the case, without a full DE, will I get back a decent bit of that battery life?

triplesquarednine

Member

Registered: 2011-04-12

Posts: 630

Re: Performance on a Macbook: Arch & OSX

Is the 10-15% decrease a sort of 'average' with Linux in general, or Arch specific? I was thinking of sticking to lightweight/terminal applications and a simple WM like Openbox if I use Arch. If that's the case, without a full DE, will I get back a decent bit of that battery life?

It's linux in general.  I've run Ubuntu, fedora and later Arch on a macbook in the past. as litemotiv pointed out Apple has some extra stuff in their drivers/software to make power-management more efficient. so with Linux it's not distro specific, but linux in general (as it is at the driver level, and thus in the kernel).

in my own experience, i found macbook's run linux nicely though. Being as Apple themselves are optimizing both hardware and software around their own implementation of a unix-type operating system. it should work fairly well for you.

cheerz

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-07-31 18:24:39)

JackH79

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-06-18

Posts: 663

Website

Re: Performance on a Macbook: Arch & OSX

I'm writing this from a MacBook 4,2 running KDE. I noticed only two things that were working less than perfect. The battery life is a wee less than on OSX, as mentioned already and, I have to say, the touchpad isn't quite as smooth and precise as it is under OSX. Small prices to pay though, I think.

Last edited by JackH79 (2011-08-01 01:04:23)