[HN Gopher] Linux Running on Apple M1
___________________________________________________________________
Linux Running on Apple M1
Author : ig0r0
Score : 285 points
Date : 2021-01-20 11:39 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| laktak wrote:
| This is cool but technically I'd say it would need to use the
| disk in the Mac to be running "on" the Mac.
| dastx wrote:
| I think running it on disk is probably the least of their
| worries. As I understand it, the GPU is the biggest hurdle to
| jump.
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| Why's that? If I netboot Linux on my desktop PC, is it not
| running "on" my desktop PC?
|
| Is the CPU/SoC not the thing on which then operating system is
| running?
| coldtea wrote:
| Technically yes. But people want to have an M1 laptop on
| which they can run Linux. Not a laptop + external disk +
| other baggage.
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| I agree with that. But given the context -- an experimental
| build targetting a new SoC, I wouldn't personally dispute
| the claim that it's running on an M1 machine.
|
| If the tweet was claiming that it was ready to go for
| general use and that everyone should install it and use it
| as their daily driver, then I could see that the external
| boot disk caveat would be more significant... but it seems
| kind of irrelevant in the context of what they've achieved
| so far.
| viraptor wrote:
| There's a bit of competition now going between asahi and
| corellium. While most of the spicy tweets have been removed,
| there's a summary
| https://twitter.com/AsahiLinux/status/1350547056679477250
|
| Essentially, while this project may be quicker to get visible
| results, they may not be able to release all the code kosher for
| merging upstream. It will be interesting to see the next steps.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| But patches have already been submitted upstream
|
| https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20210120132717.3958...
| viraptor wrote:
| This is from the Asahi project though, not the corellium one
| linked here. Also, it's only a tiny part of what's needed.
| my123 wrote:
| It is not.
| viraptor wrote:
| The patch submission is from Marcan who started asahi.
| This (HN) post links to a tweet from the CTO of
| corellium.
| my123 wrote:
| Hello,
|
| marcan is CCed on that set of patches as a courtesy, and
| he can help with figuring out better approaches before
| it's merged. Because it's set in stone forever after
| that.
|
| - someone
| viraptor wrote:
| You're right! I should've paid more attention to the
| headers. Still, this is only very basic support for the
| CPU. Much more work is needed.
| my123 wrote:
| Some more explanations about the choices taken for the
| first submission:
| https://threedots.ovh/blog/2021/01/linux-on-apple-
| silicon-ma...
| arghwhat wrote:
| Everyone can submit, doesn't mean it'll be included.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Competition is fine, but the "spiciness" was really just
| drama+pettiness on both sides :/ I'm hoping they're both past
| that now, as they should know better, but having two competing
| projects unable to assume good faith from each other is
| generally not healthy at all.
| usrusr wrote:
| Haven't followed this at all so I have no idea how far I'm
| off, but I could easily imagine that the type of person who
| dives deep to take on the M1 Linux challenge is exactly the
| kind of person who could enjoy, after noticing another team
| taking on the same project, to celebrate each other by not
| only agreeing to disagree, but agreeing to disagree * with
| all the drama they can muster*. "Hey, you're cool, let's
| publicly sling mud at each other!"
|
| I wouldn't dare considering it the most likely scenario, but
| it's surely the most lovely.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Publicly slinging mud to cause drama is childish, not
| "agreeing to disagree".
| Geminidog wrote:
| The more spiciness and completive things are the better the
| overall results. We all like to think that collaboration,
| harmony and love drives innovation but much of innovation is
| built around intense rivalry and competition as well. Don't
| be idealistic to a fault, much of the qualities we view as
| petty exist because they passed millions of years of natural
| selection. Those who compete, thrive.
|
| Winner takes all.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I take it that you are wholly unfamiliar with the
| jailbreaking scene?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ^ Precisely what I was thinking of. Some friendly
| competition is absolutely fine, but when it gets toxic,
| it drives out talented people!
|
| These things can escalate surprisingly quickly, so you
| really need to be careful. I've watched it happen.
| Geminidog wrote:
| I'm familiar. The jail breaking scene and other examples
| are one offs though. You just need to take a holistic
| view of life and civilization to know how critical
| competition is to success.
|
| All of society and the development of capitalism to
| evolutionary biology is founded on competition.
| Competition is, in fact, the primary success story and
| collaboration is the side story. Citing the failure of
| one community discounts the view of the entire world.
| Competition works, and it works better than
| collaboration. See communism if you want an example about
| a community founded on collaboration as the primary
| driver.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Putting politics aside, which I probably don't want to
| discuss in a thread about Apple silicon, competition
| where you argue about licensing and code sourcing for
| stuff that you are vying to upstream stuff to the same
| open source upstream does really not seem healthy.
| gumby wrote:
| I think that's a bit zero sum. The world needs both to
| advance.
| Geminidog wrote:
| Obviously.
|
| When teams of people compete intensely , the
| collaboration within the teams themselves must be just as
| intense.
|
| I find it slightly offensive that someone would accuse me
| of discounting collaboration when 1. I never discounted
| it, 2. It's obvious that society is full of people who
| collaborate. In what universe are the words "zero sum"
| apt for my response? None. I never described a zero sum
| game. Obviously, the replier added the description with
| his biased imagination.
|
| I'm just saying spiciness and intense rivalry and
| competition can lead to results beneficial to society.
| There are tons of examples of intense competition and
| rivalry leading to great results in science. The decoding
| of the human genome for one.
| gumby wrote:
| > I find it slightly offensive that someone would accuse
| me of discounting collaboration when 1. I never
| discounted it, 2. It's obvious that society is full of
| people who collaborate. In what universe are the words
| "zero sum" apt for my response? None. I never described a
| zero sum game. Obviously, the replier added the
| description with his biased imagination.
|
| You wrote, "Winner takes all" which seems pretty zero sum
| to me, hence my comment.
| Geminidog wrote:
| Your post implies that I discounted collaboration which I
| obviously did not. Look at the original post again, it
| deliberately says that competition is important as well
| as collaboration. Hence why your reply is categorically
| baseless.
|
| As for "winner takes all" why don't you look up the
| definition of a "zero sum game". A zero sum game usually
| applies to simplistic games like chess or an island with
| limited resources aka things that have a measurable gains
| and losses. Complex situations like the one described are
| rarely zero sum.
|
| When I say winner takes all its more of an "expression"
| symbolizing the intensity of competition. I think it's
| quite obvious that the situation here is not some contest
| setup so that a single winner takes everything. There's
| no need to make your self sound smart and use the words
| "zero sum game" redundantly. Only certain types of people
| use the words "zero sum game" colloquially for the
| purposes of sounding smart even though the majority of
| situations in nature aren't actually artificial games
| setup to be zero sum.
|
| The word is also used negatively as if zero sum games
| can't ever exist. Like it's obviously wrong if your
| describing a zero sum game. It's rare but zero sum games
| do exist so stating that something is a zero sum game
| doesn't move the conversation forward. Like so what? Yeah
| I could be describing a zero sum game, it doesn't make me
| wrong, what's your point?
|
| Case in point, the credit for the First person or team
| who can get Linux running on the m1 IS a zero sum game
| and there already is a winner for that "game."
| xu_ituairo wrote:
| > The more spiciness and completive things are the better
| the overall results.
|
| That line made you sound all-in on zero sum competition.
| But you've clarified now and softened it to say it _can_
| lead to beneficial results.
| Geminidog wrote:
| I never edited any of my posts. That line is just a
| fragment of the post, which specifically has this line:
|
| " We all like to think that collaboration, harmony and
| love drives innovation but much of innovation is built
| around intense rivalry and competition as well."
|
| Keyword here is "as well". If you feel the need to
| respond or vote someone down please read the post
| carefully rather then respond or vote baselessly.
|
| More clarification is necessary. Competition is the
| driver of natural selection. Your entire biological form
| exists as an evolution of winning traits because your
| ancestors out competed and defeated others who fought to
| reproduce so someone else could take your place.
|
| Competition is therefore a primary driver of your
| existence while collaboration is secondary. It's not that
| competition _can_ lead to benefits, the phenomenon that
| occurs is that collaboration can actually work but only
| as a tertiary driver behind competition.
|
| See communism if you want to know the results of a
| society formed with collaboration over competition as the
| primary driver.
| [deleted]
| CivBase wrote:
| I'm excited for Linux support on the M1. I don't even have a Mac
| Book, but more incentive for Linux apps to support ARM is a good
| thing.
| londons_explore wrote:
| What's DART?
| saagarjha wrote:
| "Device Address Resolution Table"-essentially an IOMMU.
| thomasfl wrote:
| A Raspberry Pi powered by something similar to the M1 or A14
| bionic processor would be something. The Broadcom 1.5 GHz 64-bit
| quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 that powers the latest raspberry pi, is
| nothing compared to the new processor beasts from Apple.
| cecja wrote:
| You are comparing apples and raspberries the one thing costs 1k
| the other thing costs 50 bucks.
| MisterTea wrote:
| An Ampere or other Arm server chip would fit the bill. Aside
| from Apple, no one is making arm chips to serve the
| laptop/desktop segment. So there's this HUGE gap between the
| endless sea of embedded/mobile Arm chips and then jumps to a
| handfull of mega-many-core server chips.
|
| Apple is finally filling in one of the Arm gaps with a mid-tier
| chip that can handle a desktop load efficiently while an
| efficient GPU can handle graphics without thermally clobbering
| each other.
| coder543 wrote:
| > Aside from Apple, no one is making arm chips to serve the
| laptop/desktop segment.
|
| You can argue that their chips in this segment are not very
| good, but Qualcomm is actually specifically addressing the
| laptop market, and they're not "no one".
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/15210/qualcomm-expands-
| lineup...
| flyinghamster wrote:
| We already have the Mac Mini, but an A14-based SBC would be
| less of a stretch than an M1. A picoMac, so to speak? That
| would almost inevitably run MacOS by default rather than Linux,
| though.
|
| The GPU is make or break for Linux. No GPU means it's just
| another server in a different form factor.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| That's basically the Apple TV.
|
| Let that thing have more standard IO, and run Linux, and it'd
| be a heck of a fanless machine.
| saagarjha wrote:
| The latest Apple TV has a fan :(
| bayindirh wrote:
| While Raspberry Pi may not be as powerful as an M1, I'd not
| discount any of these small boards.
|
| I have a OrangePi Zero w/ 512MB RAM at home and it handles a
| lot of stuff (Syncthing, DNSMasq, rsync based backups and more)
| without a glitch.
|
| The only thing it doesn't like to handle SFTP encryption at
| high speeds. Processor gets visibly strained and overheats
| after a 4MB/s or so.
| rvz wrote:
| Great progress already thanks to Corellium for the M1 linux
| projects [0][1], the PongoOS project and to all others involved.
|
| Getting GPU acceleration is _now_ the real challenge.
|
| [0] https://github.com/corellium/preloader-m1
|
| [1] https://github.com/corellium/linux-m1
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| Well. GPU, networking, power management, disk... There's more
| than 1 huge challenge
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Networking and disk will be relatively trivial I'd expect.
| GPU and power management will be very hard.
| unix_fan wrote:
| Disk isn't all that complicated. Once people figured out that
| apple's NVME implementation was custom, writing a driver for
| it wasn't all that hard, even with the t2.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Can someone explain what a .dts file is?
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's a device tree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_tree
| titzer wrote:
| Qemu is also several kinds of broken on M1.
|
| I was able to get qemu to boot an x86 Linux after applying a huge
| pile of patches I found on a forum.
|
| If you are expecting to get up and running instantly with a VM to
| put all of your comfy old software in, not so fast!
| saagarjha wrote:
| How so? I've been using QEMU to boot Intel guests without issue
| for almost six months...
| titzer wrote:
| On the M1? I could only get it to work with some patches I
| found on some forums from < 1 month ago. The issue seems to
| be hardware wx protection, among other things.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Oh, right, I just disabled that: https://gist.github.com/sa
| agarjha/d1ddd98537150e4a09520ed3ed...
| titzer wrote:
| Interesting. Do you work for Apple? The qemu patches that
| split up the RX/RW jit regions are maddeningly
| complicated. I'm curious if anyone has suggested this
| solution to them?
| saagarjha wrote:
| I don't. To be clear, this isn't an actual fix, it just
| turns off W^X enforcement altogether. It's certainly not
| something that should be merged upstream-the real fix
| should be to adopt W^X in the JIT (which is more
| complicated, as you may have seen).
| jcstryker wrote:
| Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get
| linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall
| trying to enable GPU support.
|
| I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves
| as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in
| the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and
| performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple
| machine.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Even Nvidia publish stuff for the Nouveau drivers now.
|
| I wouldn't bet on it. Apple are very insular on matters like
| this, it's their toy, end of.
| arafsheikh wrote:
| A good number of comments here mention dealing with the GPU is
| going to be a major hurdle. What makes porting GPU drivers
| significantly more challenging than everything else?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > What makes porting GPU drivers significantly more
| challenging than everything else?
|
| Multiple reasons:
|
| 1) GPU manufacturers are notorious for not publishing
| documentation out of IP/patent concerns. Worst offender is
| NVIDIA here.
|
| 2) For embedded GPUs there isn't much interest in open source
| drivers... the big customers (think Samsung and the likes)
| have direct support from the chip design vendor and get drop-
| in drivers as part of the board support package (BSP,
| basically a conglomerate of bootloader,
| kernel+modules+initrd, firmware blobs for components such as
| wifi) so they don't need OSS drivers
|
| 3) The mobile GPU space is... splintered. With desktops you
| got the three major players AMD/ATI, NVIDIA and Intel's
| built-in Iris, in the GPU space there are more.
| izacus wrote:
| > GPU manufacturers are notorious for not publishing
| documentation out of IP/patent concerns. Worst offender is
| NVIDIA here.
|
| I think easily Apple takes the cake from nVidia - they
| don't even provide drivers for anything but their platforms
| (that is for their proprietary GPU core). The GPU core
| that's actually in the M1.
| jtbayly wrote:
| A lot of this comment I don't understand how it applies to
| the Apple M1. I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm completely
| ignorant of these things. Am I just missing it?
| rswail wrote:
| Apple's M1 chip has a custom GPU built into it. There is
| no documentation on how that GPU works and Apple hasn't
| released any.
|
| Making any modern GPU work is a lot of work because of
| how complicated they are. That's even with the full
| documentation.
|
| In the Apple M1 case, the GPU will have to be reverse
| engineered to understand how it works, then a driver will
| need to be written for Linux that supports it.
| izacus wrote:
| They're very complex, very stateful devices which also run
| their own compiled shader code. Not to mention auxiliary DSPs
| like video decoders (not sure if M1 has it as part of GPU or
| a separate block), power gating control and many many more.
|
| They may have in order of 100 registers to talk to them and
| they're horribly proprietary with pretty much no
| standardisation.
|
| Reverse engineering that is hellish at best - you can see
| projects like nouveau which barely manages to get nVidia
| cores up and working without help from the manufacturer. And
| that's after years and years of development.
| vetinari wrote:
| The hurdle Noveau is facing is that some things, like
| reclocking, need firmware loaded onto the card. The
| firmware is not in non-volatile memory on the hardware, but
| a file shipped with drivers, the one shipped with
| proprietary drivers is not redistributable and if you
| wanted to make your own, it needs to be signed by Nvidia
| anyway.
|
| That's pretty much game over for Noveau, and it is not due
| to difficulties in figuring out registers and NV ISA.
| izacus wrote:
| The reclocking never really worked well on chips that
| were older than this signing requirement either.
|
| But that's a bit besides the point :)
| Twisell wrote:
| What will be interesting though is to measure the raw
| performance of this initial CPU only rendering. For now on it's
| a still image we don't know if it's sluggish as hell or
| actually pretty decent even without a GPU.
|
| If the latest is true that could prove to be another prestige
| point for the M1.
| varispeed wrote:
| Does it actually require any serious development or it is just
| mostly tweaking and changing things here and there? I am sorry
| if that sounds ignorant, but I thought these are just low
| hanging fruits to harvest. Also why Apple wouldn't do that
| themselves? To me it is an opposite to "nerd marketing", a big
| middle finger to Linux users - essentially "you are on your
| own".
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| To be honest I'm amazed Apple even cares enough one way or
| another that they mentioned Linux virtualization in the M1
| announcement. But it's not a middle finger, this was more or
| less exactly how they handled multiboot on Intel: let the
| community figure out a solution, see if it gets uptake,
| support it with a first party solution if it does. That's how
| we got Boot Camp, as there was a lot of interest in booting
| Windows at the time.
|
| It's a good sign that the latest betas (11.2 IIRC) officially
| support multiboot in the UI. That's a good indication Apple
| sees the level of interest in Linux on M1 that they intend to
| at least let it happen.
|
| I'd say it's still up in the air whether they'll go for full
| first party support with drivers or an open spec, but it's
| definitely not out of the question. And they may even have
| direct interest in it, as I'm sure they'd like to get the
| benefits of their hardware in their data centers.
| varispeed wrote:
| So essentially Apple is exploiting its consumers and get
| free research and development without having to pay
| salaries and tax? Probably that's why they are worth so
| much. I am only amazed that there is so many people willing
| to do this job for Apple for free - it would be a different
| ball game is macOS was open source, but sacrificing your
| own time and resources to enhance a commercial product...
| people are weird.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| That's... an incredibly bold take, especially on a forum
| operated by VCs, who certainly are familiar with the
| concept of finding product-market fit. Apple is observing
| the interests of people who use their products to help
| prioritize product development decisions.
|
| Maybe the people doing this for free are just interested
| in benefitting from the result? As many people who work
| for free on open source do.
|
| As far as I'm aware, there is no free (as in beer)
| hardware that runs Linux. Someone has put the effort into
| running Linux on every single for-profit/for-pay platform
| it runs on.
|
| Are you under the mistaken impression I was suggesting
| that Apple waits for a community solution to be developed
| then packages that as a product? As far as I'm aware they
| didn't do that with Boot Camp, but instead offered in-
| house drivers and blessed boot loaders and proprietary
| UI/UX for accessing both.
| oblio wrote:
| Well, that's why all the big companies open source stuff.
|
| They're hoping to get increased for themselves, increased
| adoption of their internal tools outside of the company
| (easier recruiting plus purely internal tools are
| notorious for rotting quickly) and... free labor.
| asveikau wrote:
| Just from a skim it seems like there is a new interrupt
| controller driver. The copyright header credits Linus
| Torvalds so they probably got started based on copying an
| existing one, but that sounds like substantial work and
| ongoing maintenance.
| maratc wrote:
| The interesting thing here is that now, when they own the CPU
| and GPU, and when MacOS is free, they probably might be more
| open to letting anyone install any OS on it. You want a
| Linux/BSD/Windows on M1, and you're not hurting any of their
| possible revenue streams, so why the hell not let you buy
| their hardware and throw whatever OS on it.
|
| Somebody wants to copy the hardware over and sell it for half
| price? Yeah, good luck reproducing the M1.
|
| Opening the boot loader to allow for Linux is quite an
| opposite of a middle finger, tbh. I don't know if they will
| divert some guys from working on MacOS towards Linux support,
| but this is already looking much better than before.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Were they ever opposed to running a different OS on their
| hardware? They released bootcamp, to help you do it for
| windows at least.
|
| They don't want you installing their OS on other hardware,
| not the reverse.
| saagarjha wrote:
| A middle finger from Apple would be locking the bootloader-
| keeping it open, plus providing minimal tooling and telling
| people to figure it out, is about as close to "we'd love to
| see what you'll do with it" as Apple could possibly give.
|
| (Dealing with the GPU is going to be the majority of the
| work, I'd think.)
| [deleted]
| dingaling wrote:
| > "we'd love to see what you'll do with it"
|
| ...without the documentation that would help you.
|
| When Broadcom act like this they're considered villains and
| we're recommended to stay away from their hardware. But
| when Apple do it, they're being benevolent?
|
| And that's ignoring the fact that I could actually get
| Broadcom documentation in exchange for dollars and NDA.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Broadcom is selling hardware with the intention to run
| Linux on it, I guess that is the main difference.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Apple unlocked the bootloader which is certainly
| signaling intent.
| DCKing wrote:
| Maybe. Certainly people within Apple would have thought
| about Linux for this. But Apple would need to provide
| some form of mechanism for unlocked bootloaders anyway to
| facilitate kernel/driver developers and security
| researchers, so I'm pretty sure other OSes is not the
| main reason they do this.
|
| It does work out for Apple in the end. Their current
| standard 10 years' support will look quite short now
| Moore's law is dead and their hardware has barely any
| moving parts. But they'll shush some complaints if up to
| date third party OSes are available in 2030.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| While Correlium is a bit of a minefield for obvious
| reasons, I don't understand why Apple hasn't blessed
| Marcan's work. I wouldn't expect them to commit any
| development resources of their own, but I'd think it would
| be in their interest to (A) provide Marcan with some
| documentation and (B) make an engineer available to answer
| occasional questions.
|
| Apple makes money selling hardware, and Linux support will
| sell more hardware. Perhaps not much more, but for a
| commensurately low amount of effort. What does Apple gain
| by forcing Marcan to reverse engineer everything?
| saagarjha wrote:
| I can't see why they would? Marcan is capable to be sure,
| but he's also a random guy with a Patreon. Why would
| Apple ever officially bless his work? I'd sooner seem
| them collaborating with Corellium, because that at least
| gives them a corporate entity to interact with. Plus,
| like, releasing documentation without giving away the
| stuff they want to keep to themselves, and without
| promising too much and having it break later, is work in
| and of itself that Apple is really not getting anything
| from. I mean, this is the company that still FairPlays
| apps, so...
| varispeed wrote:
| That would definitely be crossing the line. But I wonder if
| this behaviour of Apple is another avenue of stifling
| competition - that is how many smart people this will get
| involved that otherwise could have worked on a competing
| product? Then you can see how much resources any company
| dealing with Apple has to commit just to make sure their
| software keep up with Apple updates - that inhibits their
| growth and thus keeps Apple on top.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Then you can see how much resources any company dealing
| with Apple has to commit just to make sure their software
| keep up with Apple updates
|
| Apple's competitors have sufficient cash flows to pay
| whatever they need to get the best people. They just
| don't want to.
| Someone wrote:
| I know it's entering (dark?) gray territory, license wise, but
| has anybody ever attempted to wrap a Mac OS driver in a Linux
| compatibility layer?
| captn3m0 wrote:
| marcan had answered it in one of the live streams - his
| opinion was that it was a last-ditch effort that shouldn't be
| required for most usecases.
|
| Perhaps for some of the peripheral stuff (such as the
| touchbar), but the GPU ought not to need it.
| tyingq wrote:
| Oh, like the old ndiswrapper approach for various windows XP
| NIC drivers. Which worked reasonably well...I remember using
| it for some laptop with a Realtek chip.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDISwrapper
| giomasce wrote:
| Someone has begun digging the GPU.
|
| https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-1.html
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| It's not just someone, she's responsible for the Panfrost
| drivers so there's hope :)
| coding123 wrote:
| Ha nice, she expects to find an eldritch horror in there
| somewhere.
| jug wrote:
| Nice, that was a HN worthy article by itself.
| cmg wrote:
| You might like the discussion. It was posted 13 days ago,
| so many people were a little preoccupied with US events.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673631
| throwaway22442 wrote:
| This guy also got pardoned by Trump.
|
| Happy to see frame buffer, excited for great linux experience on
| m1.
| asddubs wrote:
| wow, he really did get pardoned by trump. that's kind of
| interesting
| glitchc wrote:
| Until the Linux kernel leverages instructions specific to Apple
| M1's extended ISA, this is a waste of time. The whole point of
| the M1 experience is that out of the box, it's fast, silent and
| runs for days. Yes, Linux will run, as it would run on any ARM
| processor, but it will be slow, hot and run the battery down in a
| couple of hours.
|
| It will take years for the open-source community to reverse-
| engineer the ISA and write kernel code that optimally utilizes
| it. There's no shortcut here. Until then, it's not worth buying a
| Mac just to run Linux on it.
| alexhutcheson wrote:
| What instructions from an extended ISA are you referring to?
| The only ones I've seen written up have been:
|
| 1. Instructions to change the memory ordering mode, which
| allows Rosetta2 to skip some expensive memory fences when
| translating x86 binaries to ARM.
|
| 2. Some instructions for matrix math.
|
| I wouldn't expect either of these to affect typical usage or
| battery life much, unless your workflow involves running things
| that do a ton of matrix math.
| my123 wrote:
| And the former isn't even an instruction, set a single bit in
| ACTLR_EL1 and off you go.
|
| The second is an extension that talks to a coprocessor that's
| quite application specific. And that has an unstable ISA that
| changes every year. Probably not the biggest priority for
| anyone.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Well, four bits: in addition ACTLR_EL1_EnTSO to the kernel
| also sets ACTLR_EL1_EnAPFLG | ACTLR_EL1_EnAFP |
| ACTLR_EL1_EnPRSV, whatever those are.
| glitchc wrote:
| Wow, I guess Torvalds himself must be wrong then:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/__trashed-6/
| alexhutcheson wrote:
| In that article, Torvalds specifically says:
|
| "The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other
| devices around it"
|
| That's a separate issue than the ISA extensions, which
| apply to the ARM CPU.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding Apple's custom instructions and
| how useful they are.
| izacus wrote:
| What specific instructions? I've been told by Apple fans on
| this site before release that Apple doesn't use non-standard
| instructions in their ISA and doesn't need special compiler
| treatment?
|
| Who's right now?
| glitchc wrote:
| See my response above.
|
| Plus, what do Apple fanboys know about hardware?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Both are correct. Apple uses non-standard instructions
| themselves, but for third-party developers the standard ARM
| ISA is provided for use.
| nedsma wrote:
| Any information on battery life?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Yes, there is no battery on the Mac mini.
| uncledave wrote:
| That is some insanely fast progress. Well done and hats off to
| all involved.
| acomjean wrote:
| I understand there is a thing with trying to run Linux
| everywhere, and it's a fun exercise.
|
| Even if Apple does do some open source support, Even if that
| hardware isn't quite as nice, I prefer to buy/support hardware
| and vendors that support Linux at this point.
| macNchz wrote:
| It's also just a more enjoyable experience to run Linux on
| hardware that's actually supported...I've been using Macs since
| I was a kid in 1993, and have at some point or another run
| Linux on each of them. It has pretty much always been easy to
| get up and running but frustrating to actually use. There is a
| wide chasm between "it runs" and "I want to use this every
| day", usually involving sleep/wake issues, wifi problems or
| driver issues for other internal hardware (backlights, camera
| etc).
|
| Perhaps the M1 is sufficiently compelling to muster the
| engineering resources needed to get every piece working nicely,
| we'll see!
| iSnow wrote:
| Understandable and I was ready to buy a Dell XPS as I like the
| "small and light" form factor. I was just waiting for the COVID
| buy spike to subside and see how my financial situation would
| evolve.
|
| But I have pushed the decision back to see how Linux will be
| running on the M1. From first reports, it is simply tailor-made
| for a laptop computer that doesn't get burning hot or dog slow
| because of thermal throttling.
|
| I hope intel and to a lesser extend AMD are looking at this
| thing red-faced. But they will need some time to play catch-up.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >I hope intel and to a lesser extend AMD are looking at this
| thing red-faced. But they will need some time to play catch-
| up.
|
| I think it raised their eyebrows a bit, but don't agree that
| they need some time to play catch-up. Bottom line is the vast
| majority of Intel and AMD chips are running Windows. You
| can't even buy Windows 10 for an ARM processor. Microsoft
| flirted with the idea at one point, but has pretty much
| abandoned it. So why would Intel or AMD market ARM chips at
| all when Microsoft isn't supporting them at all?
|
| If you are talking about servers that is a different story
| (since lots of servers run Linux). AMD already made a server
| with an ARM processor, the latest "Opteron" series was ARM
| https://www.amd.com/en/amd-opteron-a1100 These came out in
| 2016 and don't think they sold nearly as well as Epyc has.
| Taking a second look at offering ARM for the datacenter in
| the fture might not be a bad idea for AMD though.
| iSnow wrote:
| I wasn't talking about ARM chips in particular, but chips
| with great power management, chips that are able to pull
| great performance if it is required without hitting the
| thermal envelope instantly. Chips with a reasonably good
| GPU that doesn't exacerbate the thermal problems.
|
| The M1 isn't a Xeon in disguise, it has its limitations.
| But for the sub-notebook form factor, it's in its own class
| and freaking intel can't match it. And they've been
| treading water since about 6y now.
|
| Also: me personally, I don't care about Windows. I want to
| run Linux. I understand that's a niche market, but we are
| writing in a Linux thread, so...
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Their catch-up need not be in the form of an ARM chip. If
| they can get an x86-compatible chip to match the M1's
| performance at with similar thermals/battery, that's even
| better.
| oblio wrote:
| If you're planning that device to be your daily driver, I'd
| definitely get the XPS. A stable Linux distro running on M1
| is probably 3-5 years away, at least.
| varispeed wrote:
| I have fairly recent XPS and indeed it is a shame how poorly
| it runs in terms of throttling and getting hot. On Linux when
| you launch Teams, forget about being able to keep it on your
| lap for too long. Teams eats the CPU for breakfast and
| probably you could fry an egg on it if you closed the lid. Of
| course it has to be plugged in at all times as battery life
| is a joke after few months.
| exikyut wrote:
| (Waiting for page to load) "Nice, so they finally got a kernel to
| boot. I wonder what fancy way they'll be showing the dmesg
| infor--"
|
| "Oh."
|
| I think I need to recalibrate my idea of a 10x developer...
|
| (The standard would seem to have ratcheted up somewhat as the
| years have gone by!)
| londons_explore wrote:
| When the kernel boots, and you have a framebuffer working, all
| of userspace and gnome will probably just work with no
| modifications.
|
| You might have to play shenanigans like copying a complete
| filesystem into a ramdisk from the bootloader if your kernel
| doesn't have support for any IO/networking/storage devices. But
| you'll still be able to get this screenshot!
|
| Having said that, they have USB working, which is quite an
| effort, although I'd guess it's an IPCore that a driver already
| existed for, so it was a simple matter of figuring out memory
| mappings etc. With USB working, you can make a very usable
| system, because pretty much any peripheral will work over USB.
| wmf wrote:
| Note that this team already ported Linux to the iPhone, so what
| they did recently was update their iPhone port to support M1.
| saagarjha wrote:
| This was quite fast considering that Apple opened up booting
| custom objects sometime last week...it seems to still be software
| rendering for now, but it's good to see this progressing so
| quickly. It seems that there is effort being put into upstreaming
| this too (despite a couple of unfortunately hitches :/) so we
| might be seeing this ready for general-purpose use quite soon!
| cillian64 wrote:
| Apple officially opened up booting custom images on the M1? Do
| you have any more information about this? I had a quick search
| and couldn't find any news stories.
| kevinbowman wrote:
| This is probably what was being referenced:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25772462
|
| "macOS Big Sur 11.2 beta 2 is out with full custom kernel
| support" ... "The OS now finally includes the firmware and
| bootloaders and tools necessary to replace Big Sur with not-
| Big-Sur. That was previously not possible."
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's not something that would probably get reported widely,
| but the bputil command (which manages boot policy, as the
| name suggests) and kmutil now work as of the second beta of
| 11.2 and allow for you to provide your own code to run.
| ianai wrote:
| I wonder whether linux could benefit from the specific
| architecture changes of the M1. Apple's made a big technical
| claim of the hardware acceleration of reference counting -
| another OS and toolchain optimizing around it to any extent would
| test their claims.
|
| This both reads a little overly optimistic to me knowing how
| proprietary things are - but linux and foss software have history
| of running on all manner of platforms. Arguments based on: "you
| can only get a client machine with at max 16 gig of ram" or "you
| can't plunk an M1 into a server chassis with all the hardware you
| need" and so on may be various amounts of preliminary (we only
| have 1 chip from them yet and it's clearly a 'first out the door'
| type near-beta) to actually relevant.
| vespakoen wrote:
| marcan, who is working on AsahiLinux, is streaming at this time
| of writing and just got the framebuffer working, this is one of
| the most interesting live-code-streams I have seen.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxnWuXgj3JI
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| saving this for later. this is where the rubber meets the road.
| super interested in seeing the workstream these super-
| techncially-skilled devs use
| monopoledance wrote:
| > Started streaming 8 hours ago
|
| WTF.
| aorth wrote:
| > Started streaming 9 hours ago
|
| Still going. Don't think even stopped to eat, drink, or bio
| break. I'm also surprised his computer hasn't crashed or
| something! Really fun to watch him work.
| monopoledance wrote:
| Yeah, fascinating and a bit morbid. It's 10h now.
|
| I really think this is getting unhealthy hyperfixation and
| I really hope this is unusual for marcan, as this comes at
| a cost you can never make up for again.
|
| Btw. if you enjoy these extended coding streams, you may
| like the Scanlime livestreams:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/scanlimeinprogress/videos. She's
| also a fascinating person to observe in her natural
| environment. The videos are also low key trippy and artsy.
|
| Main channel here:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/scanlime/videos
| uberduper wrote:
| Until I have a post-EOL OS option for an M1 mac, I'm not buying.
| BrawnLongHaul wrote:
| Can I have a Beowulf cluster of those? (yes, I am a grey haired
| BOFH)
| CarVac wrote:
| One thing I've always wondered is... what did one do with a
| Beowulf cluster back when that was a thing?
| [deleted]
| joosters wrote:
| Compile linux kernels and boast about the speed?
| mprev wrote:
| I hadn't thought about Yellow Dog Linux in years until seeing
| this. Discontinued in 2012, which is understandable after Apple's
| switch to Intel.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Ah the memories of yaboot _blessing /dev/hda1 with holy penguin
| pee..._!
| geogra4 wrote:
| Their great contribution to the rpm world is yum
| ficklepickle wrote:
| For some reason it was the distro that ran best on the ps3, I
| seem to recall.
| Jonnax wrote:
| The reason is that Apple used PPC CPUs in their Mac's before
| Intel
|
| And this was a distro geared towards PowerPC hardware.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| These days it would be T2
|
| https://t2sde.org/
| midrus wrote:
| Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck
| with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware
| and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get
| things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other
| Linux friendly brand.
|
| A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving,
| suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is
| not a laptop, it's an expensive paperweight.
|
| In my opinion, other than doing it for the sake of learning and
| the challenge of it, this will lead nowhere in the long term
| unless you get any kind of commitment or support from Apple. And
| I hope I'm wrong but that's very, very unlikely to happen any
| time soon.
| simonh wrote:
| On the contrary, this could be fantastic for a headless server
| running on an M1 Mini to build and test ARM code before
| deploying to AWS Graviton. It doesn't all have to be about
| laptops.
| axaxs wrote:
| While a valid use case, it feels like overkill. There are
| much less expensive and more stable ways to accomplish this.
| midrus wrote:
| Agree, this could be a good use case.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac.
|
| I grab a machine and install Linux, and it works more or less
| out of the box. Maybe a few fixable quirks. And I don't use
| Thinkpads.
|
| I try to use Windows or macos, and it's a coin toss. Windows
| handling USB like hot garbage (hub balancing/buffer sizes
| leading to devices unable to activate, webcams glitching, input
| lagging at random intervals), display issues (macos doesn't
| support displayport MST), dock connectivity problems (macos
| freezing or crashing when connected except when it suddenly
| works for a day, Windows playing disconnect/reconnect sounds in
| a loop when the machine goes idle), and more, including just
| today out inexplicable crashing.
|
| Install Linux or plug all the "made for windows/macOS" hardware
| into a Linux box, and all the problems went away.
|
| My conclusion, supported by having been a proprietary kernel
| driver developer for Windows, FreeBSD and Linux, is that any
| hardware and driver combo tends to be a coin toss, irrespective
| of platform.
|
| But with Linux, drivers that would otherwise be abandoned after
| a project was shipped, get a chance at being fixed and improved
| that their proprietary counterparts can never even dream of.
| shimonabi wrote:
| Then tell me why my Elantech touchpad keeps freezing randomly
| on my Huawei Matebook 14d running Linux, but works fine on
| Windows.
| crubier wrote:
| MacOS a coin toss and Linux being robust regarding
| drivers/hardware support on desktop? Are you talking about
| Hackintosh, or do we not live on the same planet?
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| It's the smaller things. Obviously MacOS won't have trouble
| with mac hardware, but my work macbook can't wake up my
| monitor through HDMI, or chain DP displays, or connect to
| my phone's storage through USB, etc...
| fingerlocks wrote:
| I've never experienced the wake issue, but I always use
| usb-c to DP or HDMI and apparently those aren't affected?
| Assuming it's the same issue, a little googling shows the
| problem was fixed a year ago.
|
| What phone are you having issues with? Every android
| phone I've used will communicate with adb. iPhone has
| never used USB mass storage, and support for that has
| nothing to do with MacOS.
|
| Can't comment on the daisy chain issue, I just learned
| that was a thing.
| vetinari wrote:
| Things like printers/scanners can be a problem. With Mac, I
| cannot scan on Samsung M2070w MFP in color (with the
| Samsung/HP driver installed, which must be done manually).
|
| No such problem with Linux.
| oblio wrote:
| The thing is, many more people are using Windows, than Macs
| and many more people are using Macs, than desktop Linuxes. So
| your anecdata goes against a mountain of anecdata from people
| using those platforms.
| mmphosis wrote:
| The thing is, many more people are using phone and tablets,
| than Windows and many more people are using Windows, than
| Macs and many more people are using Macs, than desktop
| Linuxes and many more people are using desktop Linuxes,
| than desktop BSDs. So the anecdata goes against your
| mountain of anecdata that goes against a world of anecdata
| from people using those platforms.
| oblio wrote:
| Yeah, because when I use a phone or tablet I have to
| worry about installing my own drivers :-)
|
| Apples, oranges.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| When was the last time you installed your own drivers on
| a desktop Linux system, and for what?
| vetinari wrote:
| I don't remember installing any drivers in Linux in
| last... I don't even know how many... years. For the
| hardware I happened to use, it was Mac-like experience.
|
| And actually, Windows 10 is also approaching this state,
| but it is not there yet.
| girvo wrote:
| I last installed drivers on Linux... in 2007? 2008?
|
| I last installed drivers on Windows late last year.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The great thing about Linux is that almost every driver
| is included with the kernel itself, so you don't need to
| worry about installing drivers. Of course, there are
| vendors who don't like to cooperate with Linux
| developers, and release kernel-tainting drivers outside
| of the mainline kernel.
| jayd16 wrote:
| There is no choice in OS for mobile. Its strictly tied to
| the hardware so I don't see how that could show any kind
| of user preference without being dominated by hardware
| preference.
| tw04 wrote:
| >Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac.
|
| Based on...? Apple is pretty straightforward: they support
| hardware until they don't. And they're quite explicit about
| ending support and it's almost always a major release. You
| might be able to hack support after that, but I've literally
| never had it be a "toss-up" about when Apple was or wasn't
| supporting their own hardware.
|
| As for Windows... I've got a 10 year old 2600k based desktop
| that runs the latest version of windows flawlessly. I guess
| if you go back 20? 30? 40? years you might find something
| that can't run the latest version of windows, but you're
| going to be down a really, REALLY obscure rabbit hole. I
| can't say I ever recall it being a coin toss, it was about 10
| seconds on google of finding or not finding a driver.
|
| Linux on the other hand... the support of hardware is
| awesome, but determining if something is or isn't supported
| is generally an afternoon of reading mailing lists.
| meibo wrote:
| Even on old + modern thinkpads it feels like a lottery which
| hardware feature will stop working at a particular time, with
| the distros i've worked myself through.
|
| Ethernet, waking up from sleep mode, brightness adjustment...
| take your pick.
| titzer wrote:
| I discovered last week, to my chagrin, that the RAM on my x1
| carbon Stinkpad was starting to fail--memtest x86+ confirmed
| it. Memory corruption is insidious, so I rushed to the
| internet to buy new DIMMs, opened the sucker up...and there's
| no DIMM. The RAM is just soldered into the motherboard. No
| upgrade, no fix. This is now a pile of unreliable junk that
| randomly flips bits in memory. So data evac commences, with
| MD5 hashes and double, trip-checking everything.
|
| A reminder that not only software bitrots, but hardware too.
| Make sure not to buy a Stinkpad (or any hardware) with non-
| replaceable parts!
|
| (and I just bought an M1 Macbook Pro...)
| penagwin wrote:
| I'm not sure how buying a M1 macbook pro will help
| considering it also has soldered ram?
| swiley wrote:
| Buying a mac after complaining about how you can't replace
| ram seems a bit odd.
| oblio wrote:
| Feelings, not reason, probably applied there. At least it
| the logic was consistent in both cases.
| titzer wrote:
| It was a decision I was considering for months, the
| memory corruption just forced it. I didn't expect
| software to be this far behind. I was aware that the RAM
| and everything is even less upgradeable than a Stinkpad,
| but I am hoping this machine is more reliable overall and
| it will give me 5+ years of service. (My last Macbook Pro
| from 2010 was still kicking up until 2018, when I
| switched to the Stinkpad because keyboard.).
| titzer wrote:
| Yeah, I know. But the chip kicks butt :)
|
| Software will catch up with the M1, I hope!
| meibo wrote:
| I was more so referring to the Linux experience, haven't
| had any troubles with ThinkPad hardware as of yet but I
| know that there are complaints around it as of late :)
|
| Though, if you want a serviceable system, I'd stay away
| from Apple - the RAM in your new M1 mac is actually
| included in the SoC, not sure how much you'd like to get in
| there!
| my123 wrote:
| If you can pinpoint which pages are affected (in most cases
| you can), you can just add that range to the blacklist.
|
| Can work in the meantime, before you have a new machine.
| titzer wrote:
| There were dozens of ranges, too many to blacklist. Which
| made me suspect that it might actually be the memory
| controller. In which case, it's totally F'd. But given
| this I went for total data evac.
| spockz wrote:
| Couldn't you just move the disk to another device and
| read it from there instead of risking data corruption or
| going through all the hassle of comparing checksums?
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > Make sure not to buy a Stinkpad (or any hardware) with
| non-replaceable parts!
|
| Correct - that is why I bought a Thinkpad X1 Extreme - both
| SSD and RAM are user replaceable. Granted its not as thin
| as X1 Carbon but I don't need to carry it around much so
| that is not a big issue for me.
| u678u wrote:
| I dont really understand why modern devs can't carry a 5
| pound laptop. Its not exactly a burden.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Agreed. Check out the state of Linux support on Intel Macs that
| were released in and after 2016[1], it's abysmal. Once Apple
| started adding non-standard hardware, Linux support never
| caught up.
|
| It isn't like the lack of support is Linux developers' fault.
| Apple doesn't provide datasheets for their hardware, and they
| don't cooperate with developers writing drivers for their
| custom hardware.
|
| There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ARM SoCs that "run
| Linux", but that doesn't mean much because they're actually
| running Linux forks, and someone needs to maintain those forks,
| and build and release custom images for each SoC. I don't see
| M1 Macs diverting from that fate without significant support
| from Apple themselves.
|
| [1] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux/
| Skunkleton wrote:
| > that doesn't mean much because they're actually running
| Linux forks
|
| Many of these Arm SoCs are running linux forks because there
| are some terrible baked in drivers, and no spec associated
| with them. Still, that is a step ahead of the M1 as there are
| at least drivers that don't have to be decompiled and reverse
| engineered.
| vetinari wrote:
| These drivers are baked, even if there are specs for them.
|
| The thing is, that these SoCs have no PCIe or other
| enumerable bus. You (=your kernel) must know what hardware
| it is running on and which drivers to load without being
| able to ask the hardware, what is really present. One wrong
| POKE and the entire system can hang.
|
| And that is on top of the problem, how to boot in the first
| place. There is not such thing as UEFI on these SoCs. Every
| single one is a special snowflake with its own special way
| to boot.
|
| Hence, kernels built for specific systems, even if it is
| just Device Tree.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I have confidence in the parallel efforts being spearheaded by
| Marcan. He knows what he's doing and he's working on it full
| time.
| midrus wrote:
| And that's why this has no long term future. There are not
| that many people able to achieve this. One single person
| can't do it forever.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Presumably Apple isn't going to redesign their GPU
| architecture every generation? How much maintenance do you
| see this needing?
| asveikau wrote:
| Uhh... Linux supports a lot of hardware. Probably a lot of
| in-tree drivers that still get use were started as reverse
| engineering efforts by a small number of people.
|
| Perhaps you're meaning to say Apple will iterate the
| hardware faster than people can add Linux support? That's
| plausible. It also was the status quo of Linux on PCs for
| many years. (Still the case with some hardware I guess.)
| That hasn't killed Linux yet.
| na85 wrote:
| >subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume,
| the trackpad, brightness/volume controls
|
| Honestly this sounds exactly like my experience with linux on
| _any_ laptop, including three thinkpads.
|
| Linux is a great desktop and server OS but the UX of a laptop
| actually demands a certain level of polish/fit-and-finish that
| linux desktop environments just don't have, otherwise it's
| constantly getting in your way.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Yeah, other than an experimental exercises I don't get why
| anyone would ever want to do this. You will spend WAY more
| money for the Apple hardware, you will struggle to get things
| to stay consistent. If your goal is to run linux then don't buy
| a Mac.
| monopoledance wrote:
| > You will spend WAY more money for the Apple hardware
|
| I think right now the new M1 machines are actually priced
| pretty reasonable. If they'd run Linux, I would buy them in
| an instant.
|
| I mean, try to match the Air with a Thinkpad, especially if
| you consider the screen. I think there is not even one recent
| AMD Thinkpad with a > FHD screen. And who wants a 2020 Intel
| machine?
|
| Edit: To make this clear: No Linux, no Mac for me (as I don't
| believe in MacOS's future at all). But even considering the
| horrible keyboard, I think the M1 macs are totally worth it
| _just for the hardware_. That 's a first. And I am the kind
| of person who feels all warm and fuzzy over ejecting an
| ultrabay hard drive, or changing RAM/display in < 5 minutes
| in a laptop.
| jonfw wrote:
| If you care about display, trackpad, and battery life, the M1
| macs blow everything else out of the water, and for pretty
| cheap.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the
| expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon.
|
| However, I'm optimistic that these will be mostly usable on
| Linux before they're too obsolete or outdated. The platform is
| so popular and iconic that it's drawing a lot of attention from
| Linux devs and reverse engineering crowds.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the
| expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon._
|
| That's sound advice.
|
| As someone who doesn't use Linux as their daily driver, can I
| expect Linux to run perfectly in a VM on an M1 Mac?
| RyJones wrote:
| I was able to install an ARM build of Ubuntu Server using
| the Parallels beta, and it works fine.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| Good to hear this. I am waiting for my M1 Mac, and if I
| can get Linux arm64 virtual machines running for
| development purposes, I can hack the rest.
| 656565656565 wrote:
| It doesn't work fine, UI resolution restricted, sticking
| cursor issues, no parallel tools available
| sdevonoes wrote:
| I'm also interested on this. I usually run Ubuntu via
| Vagrant + Virtualbox on my Mac.
| oblio wrote:
| So the advice is to buy a second hand one 5 years from now?
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are so pessimistic. There are many
| community supported linux devices that work fine. The Microsoft
| Surface line being a prominent example. There are patches
| available for all recent kernels. And afaik all generations are
| supported. Here custom drivers have also been written.
| rgomez wrote:
| Well about the hardware support, i.e. the Ubuntu Desktop
| certified hardware list is quite long [1], and I'm quite sure
| there are a lot more perfectly working brands/models that are
| just not appearing there. I've been using a Dell Inspiron
| model, for 8 years now not appearing in that list as a daily
| driver and every major distro worked perfectly out of the box,
| some tweak required from time to time but that's it.
|
| [1] https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop
| sneak wrote:
| The first week that XNU ran on ARM, it didn't have very good
| hardware support either.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Apple has all the documentation needed to write drivers for
| all the custom hardware found in an iPhone (the original XNU-
| on-ARM device) or in an M1 Mac. The Asahi volunteers and
| Corellium don't, they will need to do much more work,
| including reverse-engineering. So, what's your point?
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| Linux does run, and it also runs on the M1.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving,
| suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc
| is not a laptop, it's an expensive paperweight.
|
| There are Mac desktops as well. That said, I'd say the list of
| mandatory components on a laptop is:
|
| - Decent GPU Drivers
|
| - Workable power management with sleep/ awake
|
| - Trackpad (this should be straight forward)
|
| The webcam, and brightness controls are stretch goals. I can't
| imaging the trackpad is vastly different from currently
| shipping ones. The Webcam might cause some significant
| headaches since Apple secures that fairly tightly.
|
| The onboard wifi modem is likely worthless, from what I recall,
| many of them are even in Windows laptops due to proprietary
| drivers.
| plauribre wrote:
| Apple's poor support for Linux on Mac hardware may reverse if
| the company gains data center ambition for the M1. Partnering
| with a cloud provider (maybe Microsoft?) to deliver seamless
| Linux deployment on M1 would be significant...
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