Arvid Gerstmann 🦀

Oh, no. At least not the hardware side. I learned EE in school but that was decades ago and I forgot all of it. I went into software. Over the last couple of years I have learned the craft on my own.

I do software for embedded and embedded-like devices professionally, however.

Thank you! Now, it only needs to work! I think I might've fried it because I had to reflow it again due to using a different solder paste.

The say “I am alive” comic

I’m reminded of this comic almost every time I check LinkedIn

To be baked in my Ninja (tm) reflow oven.

First assembly job with my new(ish) JBC manual pick'n'place. Board manufactured by @aisler.net.

Will do!

It's time for embedded world again. I'll be in town on Tuesday.

Who's there?

Fortunately, Georgia has some incredible wines!

4500€ for a MacBook Pro and it doesn't even have a charger.

This is ridiculous.

GitHub - mrconter1/rustc-php: A Rust compiler with ownership checking, written in PHP A Rust compiler with ownership checking, written in PHP - mrconter1/rustc-php

Of all the f**king cursed projects to see on Reddit today, a rust compiler written in PHP has to be top, right? ::ping @tschundler.leds.social.ap.brid.gy @xconstants.bsky.social::

github.com/mrconter1/ru...

If you don't know what the Baochip is, you need to watch this:

media.ccc.de/v/39c3-xous-...

It's brilliant, and pretty darn impressive for something created by just two people.

Now, on a dev drive, with the performance power mode enabled, all av scanning disabled, and plugged into the wall outlet, I managed to get it down to 2m 14s.

This is "only" 31s slower compared to the MacBook Pro.

The M1 compile-time was no different if on battery or not, funnily.

Now, on a dev drive, with the performance power mode enabled, all av scanning disabled, and plugged into the wall outlet, I managed to get it down to 2m 14s.

This is "only" 31s slower compared to the MacBook Pro.

The M1 compile-time was no different if on battery or not, funnily.

Set up a Dev Drive on Windows 11 Learn about the new Dev Drive storage available to improve file system performance for development scenarios using the ReFS volume format, including how to set it up, designate trust to use performanc...

Do check out setting up a dev drive: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/window...

It uses a much lighter file system and improves perf.
You still won't get linux fs speeds, but it's noticeably better.

Didn't know that existed. Been a while since I used Windows.

Thank you!

Building the same project on a 32 core Intel Xeon 8488C Platinum (AWS EC2) with 64 GiB RAM running RHEL takes 1m 26s.

M1 Max fares quite well in comparison.

I've always built the native platform. I agree, it might not be the fairest comparison. But it's the reality of working on the platform.

This probably comes as no surprise to many.

The Intel Ultra 7 265H is four years (!!!) newer than the M1 Max.

The M1 Max has 8 Performance + 2 Efficiency cores.
The Intel Ultra 7 265H has 6 Performance + 8 Efficiency cores.

Intel has a lot of catching up to do ....

Clean Rust Cargo project. Using a few hundred crates, using bindgen and clang to link wxwidgets.

Clean build on an M1 Max (from 2021): 1m 42s

Clean build on an Intel Ultra 7 265H (from 2025) in Windows: 3m 50s

Clean build on an Intel Ultra 7 265H in Linux: 3m 08s

It's unfathomable to me how someone can use a mobile Intel platform for any sort of serious work.

And then use Windows on top of that, which makes everything even worse. The fs perf on win32 is still garbage.

Compiling the same Rust project takes 100% longer on Intel vs Apple ARM64 system.

Ok, I am dumb. How else is Windows or macOS abusing planned obsolescence?

Fedora versions are only supported for about a year before being EOL.

RHEL is probably the longest supported Linux distro.

Please don't get argue with Arch. It's an unstable distro, and only worth it if you don't value your own time.

I have a job and family, I don't have time to play sysadmin.

Every commercial, and most non-commercial, Linux distributions literally have planned obsolescence. Exactly the same as macOS or Windows. The same applies for the Linux kernel itself (minor versions go EOL after only a few months).

Ubuntu versions only receive between two or five years of updates.

I have several computers I use for work regularly, and the MacBooks are by far the best.

It has to be said, though, that they also have suffered a lot recently. macOS has become quite unstable the last few years with Apple focusing more on vanity then stability.

Linux is a terrible OS if modern hardware features are concerned. Driver support is usually spotty at best, especially for less mainstream hardware. Battery life is terrible on laptops.

2026 is also not the year of the Linux desktop.

Why would you prefer a touch pads' palm rejection to work only 80% of the time instead of 100% of the time?

Don't get me wrong. I love Linux. I do 90% of all my development on a Linux machine. I run Linux on my desktop, and if I don't I have a Linux VM running all the time to work in.

But ...

You're only happy with a non-MacBook laptop if you've never tried a MacBook.

Why would you prefer waiting 20s instead of 2s for the computer to wake up from sleep?

Why do you prefer having 6 hours of battery life over 10 hours? Or 4 hours if you're running Linux instead of Windows.

There are a lot of legacy apps on the x86 platform that will need to be emulated, and which are likely to be not emulated ideally (looking at a lot of the eCAD and CADs on the market, the main reason I personally own a Windows machine.

I wish more people would realize just how much superior macOS as a platform and system really is.

When comparing my 5 year old M1 Max MacBook Pro to a brand new, late 2025, ThinkPad with similar specs (64 GiB RAM, 16 Core CPU), the MacBook still fares better in almost all accounts.

This is sad.

The P14 felt like a great middle ground between power and mobility. Dedicated graphics (albeit it only an RTX PRO 500 or 1000), lightweight and not too expensive at $3000 with 64 GB RAM.

I went with a ThinkPad P14s. Felt like great middle ground for me.

The Dell Pro Max (prev Precision) was too heavy for my liking.

On the ThinkPad side you have the T14, P1, P14, P14s or P16.

The P1 is a beast but expensive with a starting price over $3500.

The T14/T16 are great machines. No dedicated graphics, however.