Another week on Linux ⁄ Manual do Usuário

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Sometimes I get bitten by the free software bug. I’ve followed the consumer tech industry for decades, and immersed in that universe, it’s hard not to grow disillusioned with its monopolies, questionable practices, and normalized abuses. Although disdain for big tech is more fashionable these days, we’re far from any universal, practical shift because — let’s face it — that shift comes at a cost. Try convincing someone to swap WhatsApp for Signal, for instance.

In late July, my free software fever reached dangerous temperatures. Once again, I found myself installing a Linux distro with the intent of freeing myself from macOS, the first step out of Apple’s walled garden; I thought I was standing at the door of a digital utopia, something like the modern-day dream of dropping everything to go live off the land.

I’ll say it upfront: just like the previous two attempts, the penguin’s operating system didn’t last long. A few days, to be exact. Despite the early end, it was good while it lasted, and the experience left behind some valuable lessons.

My laptop, a MacBook Air with an M1 chip, made by Apple itself, is very good, but peculiar. Unlike AMD and Intel chips, this one isn’t friendly to third-party operating systems. It’s only possible to install another OS thanks to the dedication of a group of insanely committed people who reverse-engineered Apple’s closed chip architecture — the Asahi project. The fact is, it works, with caveats.

Asahi Linux’s reference distribution is Fedora. A few months ago, I discovered that a Debian team called the Debian Bananas Team adapted Asahi’s packages for the project. I went with Debian Testing running KDE’s Plasma 6.6 desktop environment.

Photo instead of a screenshot, just in case it went wrong, you know?<br>The installation is different from that on conventional computers from other brands with AMD or Intel chips. Instead of preparing a USB drive, you need to run a script from within macOS. It performs some magic to make the computer Linux-ready, resizes the storage partitions, and finally installs the alternative system and sets it as the default.

It’s a bit intimidating, especially the part where the script asks you to restart the machine while holding down the power button to enter the OS selector. Apparently something bad happens if that step isn’t executed perfectly. Otherwise, the script is very well written, and I felt confident throughout the process. Everything went smoothly, and in the end, the Debian/Plasma login screen revealed itself to me in all its glory.

Remember Apple’s claim that its computers with 8 GB of RAM (temporary memory) were equivalent to 16 GB on other computers? I hate being the bearer of bad news, but it seems to be true.

In more than four years using this laptop on macOS, with its measly 8 GB of RAM, I don’t recall a single app crashing from lack of memory, even in demanding sessions with a thousand apps open or while editing video.

In the few days I spent aboard Debian, though, the situation kept recurring, happening several times a day — way above the ideal number, which is zero.

Every single time!!<br>I’d open LibreWolf (a Firefox-based browser) and Thunderbird (mail and calendar) at the same time, and one of the two would crash. To be fair, both are RAM hogs on any operating system. When I used them on macOS, though, they never crashed.

Given that memory currently costs an arm and a leg (thanks, AI), it’s essential to do more with less, and macOS pulls off things that shouldn’t be possible with what I’ve got here.

I brought this episode up with the folks in the Manual ‘s WhatsApp group and learned I needed to increase the swap partition. I think I could’ve managed that, despite my fear of turning the laptop into a paperweight. Looking back over the screenshots I took to illustrate this account, I noticed in one of them that the system had no swap at all. A Linux-on-Apple-chips limitation? Some oversight in the installation script (I don’t recall this being mentioned)? Did I do something wrong? Who knows, but it explains a lot. Lesson learned, and my apologies for such a rookie mistake in the experiment.

Oops, my bad.<br>Either way, the struggle with 8 GB of RAM was the last straw, but not the only reason I went back to macOS. Other hard blows that threw me off balance: the fingerprint sensor that doesn’t work and — worst of all — incompatibility with my external monitor, connected via a USB-C/Thunderbolt dock.

I use the laptop’s keyboard and trackpad, and every now and then, its screen too. Most of the time I’m at my desk, where I swap the built-in display for the external monitor, which is roomier and sits at eye level. I’m past the age where I can sacrifice good posture; the consequences show up almost immediately, and they hurt. In the first few days, still buzzing on the ~dream of having my own Linux setup, I believed I could live on the laptop’s small screen, neck...