[HN Gopher] Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple S...
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Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple Silicon
Author : huhhuh
Score : 169 points
Date : 2020-11-29 19:28 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| Uptrenda wrote:
| I'd rather crowd fund a 100% open mobile chip. We've got 'open
| phones' already. But they're all still using qualcomm blobs. I
| think that is a huge vuln in our communications system. It's like
| if one company controlled the entire internet... Every piece of
| data being passed in and out of the same chip right down to the
| way radio channels are chosen, ciphers used, transports checked,
| and control messages processed... all hidden. Using so much
| insecure crap. How many people use phones for sensitive info?
| this stuff is swiss-cheese, nightmare material
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| I'd throw some money at an OpenBSD port, but that's even less
| likely to happen IMO.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Wait, did Apple actually add an option for unsigned boot on M1? I
| remember their WWDC overview saying they were only going to have
| either iPhone-style latest-version-only or any-version options,
| and them later saying they'd only be supporting virtualization.
| If they have an owner override for the secure boot on M1, then
| that's absolutely fantastic, and I suppose puts more support
| around Apple's assertions that Microsoft needs to license Windows
| on ARM for M1 before we can have Boot Camp back.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| Yes, you can turn off all of the secure boot features. Booting
| other OSs is most likely coming.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Well, from what I understand its less "turn off secure boot
| features" and more "create/add a signature for your custom
| code to secure boot". https://mobile.twitter.com/never_releas
| ed/status/13263157410...
|
| I can't find a primary source for the comment in the tweet,
| but it seems widely regarded as true at this point, so
| fingers crossed it pans out that way.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| Hm, interesting. I can't seem to find my source anylonger
| either. The wording "kernel" does suggest to me that this
| is about a check a bootloader performs. If you were to boot
| another OS, you'd probably have a different boot loader as
| well.
|
| This tweet https://twitter.com/never_released/status/133243
| 677102043545... from the same author suggests M1 is "not
| any more locked down than [...] Intel", so I'm not fully
| sure about the technical details, but in the end you should
| be able to boot your own code.
| my123 wrote:
| The lowest security level, permissive, allows to mess
| with the Secure Boot policy at will.
|
| When you use kmutil to add a custom boot entry, enrolling
| the hash of your executable to the Secure Boot policy is
| handled automatically as part of the tool.
| rsynnott wrote:
| From the very twitter thread you're replying to:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/13331260180689551...
| dan1234 wrote:
| Yes, you can use recovery mode to set the 'permissive' security
| policy, which "Does not enforce any requirements on the
| bootable operating system".
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl82829c17/...
| sigjuice wrote:
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10686/?time...
|
| _Reduced security allows you to run any version of macOS,
| including the versions that are no longer signed by Apple._
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| Do we expect that this port will be complete before another
| chipmaker is able to achieve similar performance?
| internet2000 wrote:
| If mobile is any indication, expect the performance gap to
| widen as time goes on.
| oblio wrote:
| Isn't Qualcomm kind of the same distance behind with the most
| recent hardware? I don't get the impression that the gap is
| widening, with the new high perf ARM cores it seems to be
| shrinking, even.
| buryat wrote:
| Cant a $2 trillion dollar company fund this by itself??
| LASR wrote:
| They can. But not clear to me if they will.
| myrandomcomment wrote:
| Yes, but they make macOS not Linux. The amount of HW sales
| generated by Apple putting people on writing code to support
| Linux on their HW will be less then the Apple sales teams
| collective bar tab.
| sweden wrote:
| Keep in mind that something as fundamental as the GPU driver
| wouldn't be available even they managed to get Linux up and
| running.
|
| And the M1 GPU is Apple's full custom GPU. Even if someone tried
| to reverse engineer a driver, it would take decades.
| internet2000 wrote:
| He seems relatively optimistic about getting a GPU driver
| going: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1333126014910701568
|
| I don't think it'd take decades. Nouveau was pretty ok after
| like 5 years, wasn't it?
| sweden wrote:
| It has been longer than that and 3D support is still a bit
| shaky. And this is based on known hardware.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| And Nouveau has to work with dozens of Nvidia cards, not just
| one, and full of legacy nonsense. I'm fairly optimistic it
| won't take 5 years.
|
| (Especially not to the point of having a composited desktop;
| long tail game compatibility is less of a critical thing
| since, well, there are next to no games for ARM Linux...)
| sweden wrote:
| If you are just planning to hack something to show some
| basic and buggy 2D rendering, 5 years might be realistic.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| "Just 2D" isn't really a thing, given modern GPU usage is
| all based on fully programmable 3D pipelines anyway. What
| I mean is the endless frustrating job of debugging closed
| source game corner cases (and often outright game bugs)
| is less critical here, since those games won't exist for
| ARM anyway. If it gets to the point where X11 and
| Wayland, desktop environments, common widget toolkits,
| browsers, media players, etc work smoothly and stably and
| perform well, then a lot of people will be very happy
| already. The long tail will always be there to chip at,
| and that will take years (not like vendor drivers are
| bug-free on any OS either!), but it's not a blocking
| factor to a usable desktop Linux experience. Lower-
| hanging fruit first.
| reificator wrote:
| This talk was posted in another comment chain:
| https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016
|
| This was 3 years after the hardware release, presented on
| substantially more locked-down (but x86 and PC-like GPU
| to be fair) hardware with a demonstration of Portal 2
| running in real time. Presented by the person you are
| replying to. I'm also assuming there was no funding
| involved given the requirement to build an exploit just
| to boot anything on the PS4.
|
| As an unabashed cynic myself: Your cynicism as someone
| uninvolved with the project is outweighed by the informed
| opinion of someone who has demonstrated ability in the
| field of porting linux to other platforms.
| sweden wrote:
| I know very well who marcan is and I also have quite some
| experience in this area. I know how challenging these
| kind of things are and I just didn't expand on my
| argument because it is a very ambitious project.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| To be fair, as the author of that: that was mostly a job
| of reverse engineering what was weird/broken/different
| about the PS4's GPU, which is otherwise a standard
| Radeon. It was effectively adding support for a new
| Radeon variant chip of an existing GPU generation. There
| was definitely a deep dive into the platform and I
| reverse engineered the proprietary Radeon firmware CPU
| architecture in the process (which nobody had done
| before), though, so I think I get some credit for that.
| But e.g. the userspace side "just worked" after a few
| trivial library patches; AMD's entire userspace blob
| GL/Vulkan driver worked completely unmodified once the
| kernel side was fixed up.
|
| This would be adding support for a completely different
| GPU, which is a whole different ballgame and order of
| magnitude of complexity.
|
| That said, as many hours as went into the PS4 Linux
| project, it was a hobby thing and I'm pretty sure if you
| add up the hours spent on the GPU side it wouldn't hit
| one month's worth of full-time work. I'm also offering a
| whole different order of magnitude of time investment
| here.
| [deleted]
| codetrotter wrote:
| If you get funding to do the Linux to Apple hardware
| port, have you considered streaming the whole process on
| e.g. Twitch?
|
| Would be very interesting to watch everything from the
| sideline. And as a reason to do it, aside from being
| inspiring and educational to others, by live-streaming
| your work you will certainly be able to attract even more
| funding over time.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| I don't think I'd do literally _the whole process_ as
| that could get old and tiring quite quickly, but I am
| definitely considering doing streams when it makes sense
| and I 'm in the mood, or maybe setting up a regular
| schedule, or something like that.
| edoceo wrote:
| Maybe Apple can provide some blobs? Like the closed Nvidia
| drivers
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I doubt Apple would though. Why help people run non-standard
| OSs on your hardware with no App Store?
| internet2000 wrote:
| Because it sells the hardware, where they make the most
| money. I don't think they _will_ do something like that,
| but I think the reason is that they just don 't care enough
| to dedicate internal resources.
| oblio wrote:
| Apple is turning into a services company, though, look at
| their numbers.
|
| And one of those core services is the App Store.
| izacus wrote:
| Well, even for BootCamp, a marketed feature, they only
| dropped a halfarsed set of drivers which worked very
| poorly and were pretty never updated. We need to use
| hacked AMD drivers to get updates for the Radeons and the
| Macs still overheat and burn a lot energy due to lack of
| even basic power saving features. Heck, even the GPU
| switching isn't implemented.
|
| Why would there be expectation they'd do anything more
| for Linux?
| macintux wrote:
| > Why would there be expectation they'd do anything more
| for Linux?
|
| Linux is more complementary, compared to Windows which
| has been an existential threat to the Mac since the 90s.
|
| I agree with an earlier comment: I don't _expect_ Apple
| will provide any assistance, but neither do I see it as
| entirely unlikely.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If I thought there was a good chance of having the work
| upstreamed so that a mainline Linux kernel would eventually work
| on these computers, maybe.
|
| In my experience, there are not many ARM SoCs that have mainline
| support, even some of the Raspberry Pi boards don't, and they're
| some of the most popular ARM SoCs used for Linux.
|
| A lot of these projects get to the stage where a forked kernel
| will run on the SoC, but then support and attention peters out
| when it comes upgrading the fork or getting the work into
| mainline Linux because a new and better ARM SoC will be released,
| and then that requires the same amount of work on a new Linux
| fork. Since each ARM SoC released is a unique hardware
| configuration, a lot of this work will be for naught when Apple
| releases new SoCs that require the same amount of work, or even
| more work, to get Linux running on them.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| I'd be curious if you had a rough outline of what are the steps
| involved in porting Linux to a new target? In particular, I see
| folks working on a downstream port the the 3DS:
| https://github.com/xerpi/linux_3ds. I'm kind of curious where
| do people even start?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Here's an outline for getting Linux running on ARM SoCs:
| https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf
| sly010 wrote:
| Wouldn't device tree solve (or at least mitigate) this problem
| somewhat? e.g. most broadcom chips have the same I2C hardware
| block, just mapped to a different memory address.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| This would absolutely all be done with upstreamability in mind,
| and upstreamed as soon as is practical.
|
| All that horrible forked kernel stuff is the realm of companies
| with closed development teams who don't care and just want a
| product out the door.
|
| The PS4 Linux stuff I did was not upstreamed for lack of
| time/interest, but I absolutely considered it being decent
| enough to upstream when writing it. PS3 Linux running under
| GameOS mode patches were indeed upstreamed (though there was a
| bit of a lawsuit along the way so all of my code ended up
| attributed to a friend instead since I was keeping a lower
| profile at the time...).
| chippiewill wrote:
| I think this is a legitimate concern, but it seems less likely
| to me, specifically in the case of Apple hardware, for two
| reasons:
|
| 1. There will be far more interest in being able to run Linux
| on that hardware, and in being able to keep it up to date
| (since it'll be a daily driver).
|
| 2. Apple are probably less likely to regularly make drastic
| changes between hardware revisions because they will need to
| support multiple hardware revisions themselves (Apple are
| typically pretty good with supporting old hardware). Their only
| strong motivator would be to actively prevent people running
| other OSes but I don't think Apple care that much about
| screwing over that niche demographic - especially when they're
| already paying for the hardware.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| With regard to #1, Linux support on existing Intel Macbooks
| since 2015 has been pretty poor[1]. That doesn't give me much
| confidence about support while Macs get more and more
| esoteric hardware configurations.
|
| As for #2, perhaps, but we've already seen what happens when
| Apple adds their proprietary hardware to existing x86 systems
| with things like the T2 chip or the Touchbar. Support for
| either on Linux is still poor and nonexistent. Full
| integration with hardware and software on Apple's end means
| that they don't have to worry about compatibility like 3rd
| party hardware manufacturers do.
|
| [1] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux
| oblio wrote:
| I'm skeptical. Linux is reasonably popular for "Windows"
| hardware, most statistics put it at about 0.5% market share.
| I've never seen anyone running Linux on Intel Macs.
|
| Why would ARM Macs, which seem quite a bit more locked down,
| ever become a better supported and more popular Linux
| hardware platform?
|
| I wish they would become one, but I don't see how we can make
| this leap.
| 27thPW wrote:
| Anecdotally, I just bought my first Mac just because of the
| M1. It's an absolute game-changer and at least 5 years
| ahead of the competition. If macOS becomes too burdensome
| or heavy-handed, I anticipate I'll move to some Linux
| distribution assuming there's support (and would help fund
| its development). I'm guessing there are at least a few
| people like me who will constitute a market for developers
| to cater to.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Hi from Linux on an Intel Mac.
|
| (I've got fixing up amdgpu to work on this 2015 iMac on my
| TODO list too... might even do that as a bonus warm-up if
| this takes off, while I get my hands on an M1 mac)
| oblio wrote:
| I admire the work but you have to admit that even after
| all this time it's easier to install Ubuntu, say, on a
| random PC :-)
| marcan_42 wrote:
| To be honest, the only problems on this iMac are audio
| (fair to say Apple's fault), the screen only running at
| 4K max (Apple custom stuff involved for 5K, but hey, not
| complaining about 4K, go find me an AiO PC with a 5K
| screem), the amdgpu issue (not really an Apple problem,
| it's just a rarer chip and probably a dumb bugfix and the
| older radeon driver works fine), and the Ethernet and SD
| card reader being problematic (that's a Broadcom chip and
| their silicon is universally buggy; not Apple's fault,
| these chips have issues on PCs too)
|
| So really just audio is the one thing that jumps out as
| broken and specific to this being a Mac. I personally
| happen not to care as I use an external audio interface
| anyway :-)
|
| Actual installation is trivial, it's just standard UEFI
| pretty much. As long as the right GPU driver loads you're
| fine. Thunderbolt and all that works out of the box.
| sweden wrote:
| Btw, I hate twitter for this. Why isn't someone as technical as
| Marcan posting this on a blog?
|
| The world went mad.
| kilbuz wrote:
| Eyeball count matters a lot.
| pengaru wrote:
| Most of what makes the M1 interesting is TSMC's 5nm process, why
| wouldn't we expect similar results from future x86 CPUs on 5nm or
| smaller.
|
| At least AMD is supporting upstream Linux development for GPU
| support, if you care about Free software and control over your
| computers, throw your money at companies better aligned with
| those goals. Don't reward Apple for being assholes.
|
| <=5nm AMD Zen SoCs will be fantastic as well
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Most of what makes the M1 interesting is TSMC 's 5nm
| process, why wouldn't we expect similar results from future x86
| CPUs on 5nm or smaller._
|
| It's many things working together, 5nm is not "most of it".
|
| Not to mention TSMC is already working on 3nm.
| zucker42 wrote:
| The other thing that makes M1 interesting is it's ARM with
| specific hardware support for fast x86 emulation, which IMO is
| unlikely to be replicated in a top of the line laptop for the
| next 5 years.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| Are they really assholes? Competition is important to progress
| and I like that their M1 release has shaken things up so much.
| We should hopefully be seeing similar CPUs released in the
| future, now that Apple has shown a glimpse of what's possible.
|
| Until then I'll be enjoying the M1 because even if they're
| assholes, they're assholes who can make a computer I actually
| like using.
| hu3 wrote:
| Is there an ETA for 5nm AMD SoCs?
| pengaru wrote:
| Not AFAIK, but it's not like 7nm AMD SoCs are intolerable
| dogs.
|
| Most M1 vs. PC comparisons are being made against Intel's
| ancient process, for obvious Apple-favoring reasons.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It's mostly compared to Intel since there's no official AMD
| support on MacOS whatsoever. You very well could compare
| hackintosh AMD to Apple's M1, but it wouldn't be comparing
| Apples to Apples. There are indeed AMD Windows comparisons,
| however[0].
|
| 0: https://youtu.be/4MkrEMjPk24?t=10m39s
| judge2020 wrote:
| Although Apple booked TSMC's entire production line (for an
| unknown length of time)[0], this official graph looks like it
| indicates 5nm before 2022 (so 2021)[1].
|
| 0: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-
| tsm...
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/iuiO6rqYV4o?t=12m56s
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Huawei got a large fraction of TSMC's 5nm production this
| year because it had to stockpile chips ahead of the trade
| sanctions kicking in
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Do the companies better aligned make full-metal laptops
| challenging MacBookAir durability and design while being 100%
| Linux-compatible?
| Shared404 wrote:
| My understanding is that some of the newer ThinkPad's fit
| that bill.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| There are e.g. Dell XPS "developer edition" which are
| shipping with Ubuntu and have near 100% hardware support (I
| think there's some issue with fingerprint reader).
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I'm hoping in the future System76 does, they're already
| making excellent desktop machines.
| bigdict wrote:
| Or do support Linux on M1 because you do want it, and reward
| Apple for making good hardware.
| lumost wrote:
| I could be mistaken, but I'm unaware of any kernel
| capabilities/optimizations for heterogeneous cores with
| differing power requirements. System memory for both gpu and
| cpu workloads would also be a new requirement requiring some
| thought.
|
| I'd expect it to be difficult for amd/intel to match
| performance without similar software capabilities.
| pengaru wrote:
| Without any independent actual measurements of the same stack
| running on the same hardware with those optimizations turned
| off, we can't draw any conclusions regarding their
| significance.
|
| Considering Apple has been so adamant about misrepresenting
| what's really TSMC silicon as "Apple Silicon", I'm viewing
| everything they say through "PR oozing with insecurity about
| not actually controlling access to their chip's manufacturing
| process, and desperate to convince consumers (and investors)
| of this being a uniquely Apple advantage" glasses.
| mdellabitta wrote:
| Based on your qualification of who's silicon it is, AMD,
| Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, STMicroelectronics,
| and Qualcomm do not manufacture chips... Even IBM uses
| TSMC. That's a lot of the CPU silicon shipping right now.
|
| The market has changed, and most CPU vendors don't fab
| their own chips anymore. The IP is in the chip design. Are
| you saying TSMC designed the M1?
| delroth wrote:
| Aren't you basically describing big.LITTLE, which has been
| standard in most mobile SoCs for years now? (And was probably
| introduced in Android before iOS.)
| lumost wrote:
| ahh you are correct! I see support was added in kernel 3.11
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I'm not sure that's exactly accurate. The special JavaScript
| instructions, and the optimizations to retain/release counts
| within memory blocks, seem much more interesting.
| https://mobile.twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1331735383193903...
|
| I haven't the foggiest idea if any of this could make it to
| competing ARM chips, but given how many years Snapdragons have
| been lagging relative to the iPhone "A" chips, I don't feel too
| optimistic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm assuming this is for the kernel itself. After that, does the
| distro matter?
| Geminidog wrote:
| A distro specifically targetting the apple form factor would be
| great. Even with linux as it is now there's still a huge number
| compatibility issues and jankiness at a per distro basis.
|
| A distro targetting just apple would greatly simplify what
| needs to be done and overall lead to a better user experience.
| wmf wrote:
| Not really; all the distros use the same low-level components.
| There would be work on a per-distro basis to use the right
| #defines and patches though.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Apple won't support it, therefore support and maintenance will be
| working around apples proprietary hardware and special drivers.
| Linux is not meant to live in that environment, I'd argue
| bettering support for other OEM's is a more fruitfull goal.
| toper-centage wrote:
| On the other hand, we have basically one single model per year
| to support. That hardware is used by millions and usually users
| keep it for 5 or more years.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| That's not too big advantage - e.g. the major problems with
| GPU drivers don't seem to be caused by too many companies
| producing them (2 or 3 depending on how you count) or too
| many models (new architecture appears only once every couple
| of years).
|
| (I won't trust myself to speculate on what is making GPU
| drivers so difficult to get right)
| m00x wrote:
| If anyone has been following nvidia/linux story, this nails it
| on the head. Apple has never played well with FOSS and aren't
| going to start now. Apple's implementation will always be
| ahead, better, less bugs, and the linux port will always be a
| shitty experience that takes up several weeks to get working
| properly, and then it'll be slower than expected.
|
| Get yourself a laptop with an nvidia card and Ubuntu. Even
| today it's a garbage experience that takes up hours/days of
| debugging to get right, and then it's still way worse than the
| mac/windows experience.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Apple have a FOSS kernel, one of the three remaining web
| renderers, CUPS, and a bunch more smaller things. They're not
| the most religious of FOSS companies, but it's a bit unfair
| to say they don't play well in the places that they play.
|
| If you take FOSS to mean only GPL, then yes, I get your
| point.
| mondoshawan wrote:
| XNU is not FOSS, and 99% of the foundation classes, Aqua,
| and drivers are all proprietary.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Why is XNU not FOSS? Has something changed? Is Wikipedia
| wrong? It says that XNU is APSL which is approved by OSI
| and FSF.
|
| While I agree that much of the good stuff is proprietary
| (but certainly not all, eg WebKit), that doesn't mean
| that the free stuff isn't free.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Public_Source_Licen
| se
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Yeah I think it's more often that FOSS that doesn't play
| well with Apple. It's understandable - Apple keeps a lot of
| desirable software for itself - but perhaps unfortunate.
|
| Federici has said in one of his interviews that Apple wants
| people to hack on the M1 machines so I'm hopeful that they
| will be more open than on IOS.
|
| All of that said, I won't hold my breath.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I've been struggling with nvidia on my laptop for quite some
| time, but I definitely wouldn't say it took debugging. There
| are clear limitations, primarily that on older chips the gpu
| never fully powers down when not offloading, but that was
| pretty clear from the start. And that's on Arch, using a port
| of a tool that was _made_ for Ubuntu. On newer computers, it
| works even better. No matter what, there isn 't much room for
| debugging, be that a good or bad thing.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I have a Dell XPS 9500 (the 2020 model) with an nVidia
| driver. I run PopOS! as my daily driver and it works with the
| GPU just fine.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Twitter seems like a poor choice for this (anything really?). Is
| there a gofundme or something?
| comex wrote:
| The Twitter link is just a poll to survey interest. If you read
| further in the thread, he suggested the actual fundraising
| would be on Patreon.
| jhfdbkofdcho wrote:
| He should do a Patreon. Other people have done this sort of
| thing with this model over there. Seems sustainable.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Yeah forgot about this, not sure how well it would work for a
| project without a regular set of deliverables but probably
| better than gfm
| amedvednikov wrote:
| Github Sponsors is better. No fees/VAT.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I used to run Ubuntu on an Intel macbook back around 2009 or so.
| In general stuff worked ok but little things like the touchpad
| was goofy and only basic functionality. webcam had all kinds of
| problems. Suspend/resume didn't really work. Battery life was
| terrible. Screen brightness buttons didn't work.
|
| So I'm sure it's cool and people will like it but no, I'm not
| paying $5 month for a crappy computer experience. Good luck
| though!
| tobinfricke wrote:
| Does OS X still run on top of Darwin? If so, seems like a
| GNU/Darwin environment might be a better bet.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
| squarefoot wrote:
| No, I wouldn't, not even if I could print billions in a snap.
|
| I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open
| platform, rather to a technically superior but proprietary close
| one whose owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they
| would smell competition from Linux in any of their core business
| fields. No thanks, I'll send my small quid to whomever appears to
| be really in favor of openness, no strings attached, which is
| neither the case with Apple as it is not with Google or
| Microsoft.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-app...
| osy wrote:
| If there's anyone in the community I'd trust to do this, it would
| be marcan, who, among countless other things, got Linux working
| with GPU acceleration on the PS4.
| https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016
| shmerl wrote:
| Not sure. As long as Apple are hostile to running anything else
| on their hardware, reverse engineering it (for all the drivers
| and etc.) might be simply a waste of time and resources which
| could be better applied to something useful and actually friendly
| to openness.
|
| Especially since such reverse engineering will require constant
| chasing after changes to stay relevant.
| evolve2k wrote:
| False. Respectfully it seems you didn't read much of the
| thread.
|
| From the thread Apple have actively left the door open so other
| (currently non existent) OS could be booted, but as the author
| said, they've left it open but have not provided documentation.
|
| From the thread:
|
| "Linus himself has said he'd love to see Linux running on M1
| macs, but doesn't think it'll happen. Not because they're
| locked down, but because Apple won't help us with
| documentation.
|
| But they at least did this:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/marcan42/status/13331260180689551...
|
| The fact that Apple allows this in their secureboot policy is
| critical. Linux ports to game consoles / iPhones / etc are all
| fun and games, but you're always at the mercy of exploits, and
| the resulting cat and mouse game.
|
| That means all effort is wasted unless exploits keep up, and
| regular users would never want to do this and severely limit
| their access to official upgrades and such. But this isn't an
| issue with M1 macs."
|
| Continues to discussions of limitations..
| shmerl wrote:
| See the comment by Linus Torvalds about it. Leaving the door
| open is a poor excuse, because they can close it at any time
| putting all your invested effort down the drain. I'd say -
| don't waste your time.
| internet2000 wrote:
| People have been saying that since the first implementation
| of System Integrity Protection/Gatekeeper 5 years ago. It's
| been long enough to the point I think your comments counts
| as FUD... yes they can do it, but there hasn't been any
| indication they would.
| shmerl wrote:
| I wouldn't trust Apple with anything. Lock-in is their
| bread and butter. Just because they didn't lock something
| down for some time means nothing given they are very
| aggressive with lock-in in other areas. You don't need
| FUD to know their infamous reputation.
| macintux wrote:
| The problem is this notion is not able to be disproved.
| While I'm completely confident that 10 years from now the
| Mac will still be open enough to be considered a "real"
| computer, I'm also confident that 10 years from now
| someone will be predicting its imminent demise because
| the water just keeps boiling hotter and hotter.
|
| So we'll keep having this argument (and the argument over
| whether apps will be installable in the future without
| Apple's permission), over and again, year after year.
| melq wrote:
| IMO it's not an unreasonable notion to have. I don't
| think its out of the question that they would change
| course and lock it down. I'm not saying it's likely or
| probable, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern.
| In any event, it annoys me that the parent commentator is
| being dismissed out of hand and downvoted for expressing
| a legitimate concern.
| macintux wrote:
| It's a tired, un-nuanced concern that doesn't indicate
| any understanding of _why_ Apple favors lock-in.
|
| It's like an online political debate: it's possible to
| persuade someone, maybe, but you need a better argument
| than mean old Apple wants to take our toys away.
| shmerl wrote:
| I'd say it's not tired and completely legit. Apple have
| no one to blame but themselves for having such
| reputation. They simply didn't do enough to earn trust,
| while did a ton to earn distrust.
| eikenberry wrote:
| > but because Apple won't help us with documentation.
|
| No documentation is being hostile to other OSes running on
| their hardware.
| melq wrote:
| I agree. Not locking the bootloader doesn't mean they're
| going to embrace running other operating systems.
|
| As a long time mac user, the idea of them supporting other
| operating systems seems really un-Appley to me. What
| happens if I put linux on my (still under warranty) macbook
| and then have to take it in to an Apple store for some
| reason?
| lxgr wrote:
| > As long as Apple are hostile to running anything else on
| their hardware
|
| Are they? Apple isn't only iOS. Macs have always had unlockable
| bootloaders.
| Ecco wrote:
| I understand why the developer would like to get a recurring form
| of revenue, but as a consumer buying a subscription makes no
| sense at all!
|
| The goods obtained (Linux on MabBookAirX,Y) are very much non-
| recurring by nature...
| zethraeus wrote:
| This is the newly-normal software subscription package or a
| stipend to bootstrap a project. Both feel pretty normal!
|
| Even if it _is_ the former, updates & improvements take work.
| And they seem likely to be necessary here.
| wtf77 wrote:
| Can someone explain me the purpose of writing such this long
| thread....on Twitter?
| [deleted]
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