Is there an open platform with an ARM processor that has the same caliber of hardware performance / efficiency of M1? If so, I'd rather use that with Linux instead of Apple's locked-down hardware. But as far as I can tell no one except Apple can make performant & light laptops that run cool without a fan.
There are no true open platforms. And we are trending towards them being more closed, with Apple leading the charge. For the good of yourself, and future generations, you should not financially support companies that lock things down.
Especially not for pointless goal posts/metrics like whether or not it has a fan.
You think heat and power management is a pointless goal?
Technology should be made as a contribution to humanity.
But it should also solve problems and make lives easier for its users. A thin and light laptop that consumes a fraction of power and generates a fraction of heat does exactly that.
I love FOSS for its contributions to humanity and its capability to be practical. But open hardware is often not. It's usually terribly expensive, very inconvenient or simply badly executed.
At some point, being blind to the advancements from a closed platform becomes being blind to people's needs and ending up lost in a cloud of ideology.
Back then, an advantage of Linux against other Unixes was being able to run in a domestic IBM PC Clone. Which, at the time, was the "small fan computer" at least compared to big mainframes running commercial Unix
