[HN Gopher] November 2022 Progress Report
___________________________________________________________________
November 2022 Progress Report
Author : Wowfunhappy
Score : 197 points
Date : 2022-11-22 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asahilinux.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (asahilinux.org)
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > But what about the display brightness? [...] In order to
| support the display output properly, we need a driver for Apple's
| DCP coprocessor and its firmware. We've already talked about DCP
| in the past, and how cursed the interface is! Since then, Alyssa
| wrote a Linux kernel DRM KMS driver for DCP and Janne took over
| maintenance, and he's been steadily adding features, including
| brightness control support.
|
| > However, it does come with some caveats: the driver [...] may
| also reduce performance on some setups, since it is really meant
| to be used together with GPU acceleration (the simpledrm
| framebuffer driver has some software rendering optimizations that
| DCP lacks) and clients using the modern atomic-modeset and swap
| APIs, like Wayland compositors. It also has some limitations when
| used with legacy clients such as Xorg - in particular, there is
| no support for true VBlank interrupts, and it is unclear whether
| the hardware/firmware supports this at all. This breaks XFCE4's
| window manager with compositing enabled. For these reasons, we
| are not enabling DCP by default for all users
|
| Is there a reason they can't use the DCP driver to change display
| brightness without switching over to it entirely? It sounds like
| DCP and GPU acceleration probably ought to ship together--but
| IMO, changing display brightness is a must-have, in order to use
| a laptop comfortably in different ambient environments.
| X-Cubed wrote:
| They mentioned that the display output is currently using a
| framebuffer provided by the boot loader. I suspect when the DCP
| is initialized, the screen starts displaying a different
| framebuffer provided by the DCP, so if it was just used for
| brightness the screen would go blank.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Could you switch it back afterwards though? Having it
| temporarily blank to switch brightness doesn't seem so awful.
| gigatexal wrote:
| There should be case studies written by what this team of
| engineers has been able to accomplish. Everyone said why? Don't
| do it. It's not worth it. And yet. Here we are. What amazing
| work. I can't wait to get an M series chip powered Mac and limit
| Linux on it because of these folks.
| yewenjie wrote:
| How big is the Asahi Team? I wonder, since there is so much of
| community interest in the final product, why do we not see a lot
| more community participation in the development as well?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| What makes you say there isn't community participation? The
| repo for m1n1, at least, has 42 contributors according to
| Github[1]. There's plenty more reporting bugs and such, and
| their IRC channel seems relatively active.
|
| 1: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1
| hendersoon wrote:
| Work on Mx GPU drivers is particularly interesting as it could
| allow for performant MacOS virtualization on commodity PC
| hardware. Right now if you virtualize MacOS interactive desktop
| performance is unusably slow unless you pass through a PCIe GPU.
| my123 wrote:
| Nah, Apple has a very clean Metal paravirtualisation ABI. This
| allows to decouple the VM from the underlying HW.
|
| macOS 12 VMs will run on Mac hardware that doesn't even exist
| yet, with GPU acceleration.
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| Only supports Metal though, no OpenGL apps (even through
| their OpenGL implementation is written on top of Metal).
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I... don't think it will. There's a pretty big difference
| between writing a driver for a GPU and actually emulating that
| GPU, much less with reasonable performance.
|
| And I do think that's what you'd have to do, because unlike on
| Intel, macOS on Apple Silicon does not support software
| rendering.
| bityard wrote:
| > Ah, but when people say "power management", what they usually
| mean is "suspend". See, ancient x86 platforms (where "ancient"
| means "everything prior to 2015 or so") don't have reasonable
| real idle power management like Apple Silicon Macs do.
|
| Well, I've been perfectly happy with the "ancient" power
| management of my computers. It took a decade or two until
| suspend/resume actually _worked_ most of the time, and now all of
| that has been swapped out wholesale by a set of states that are
| at least an order of magnitude more complicated.
|
| Apparently on newer chipsets, there is no such thing as "suspend
| to RAM" anymore. Instead, they rely on the OS to micro-manage the
| sleep states of all the various component that make up the
| system. I can see this being effective in smartphones where one
| vendor (Apple, Google) owns the whole stack of hardware,
| firmware, and software plus a large chunk of every third-party
| application by tightly controlling what code can run. They can
| actually run functional tests on the whole stack under varying
| conditions and have access to every part to debug issues.
|
| Heck, it probably works great on Apple computers for the same
| reasons. But on general-purpose computers made up of components
| from dozens of manufacturers running dog-knows-what software and
| drivers, I don't think it can ever work well. There is already
| lots of evidence that these "modern" intermediate sleep states
| are causing real problems not only for Linux users (poor battery
| life while running, high battery drain while suspended) but also
| Windows users whose laptops bake themselves to death inside a
| backpack because a toolbar widget or something woke the system up
| at 3 a.m. and it then decided to run Windows Update.
|
| When I suspend my laptop, I want to know, with _certainty_, that
| it will stay suspended until I physically open it. From
| everything I've been reading, newer laptops offer no such
| guarantee. The only way to know that your computer won't wake up
| on its own is by powering it completely down, like we did in the
| 1990s. Not looking forward to that.
|
| I am all for more power-efficient computers but introducing these
| new sleep states while throwing out the old ones completely
| really feels like some backwards pageantry.
| bombcar wrote:
| Powering them all the way down doesn't even work sometimes; you
| have to physically open the case and disconnect the battery.
| It's really annoying.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I remember that an older machine, a core 2 duo laptop that I
| had could stay in deep sleep for weeks and it'd function just
| fine after.
|
| Modern laptops don't seem to have this capability
| unfortunately. Both my Mac and Linux machine (even with
| windows) doesn't seem to last as long these days.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| That's why I do all my computing on a Univac 1100/80. I've even
| hacked a clamshell for it so I can port it around.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > Well, I've been perfectly happy with the "ancient" power
| management of my computers. It took a decade or two until
| suspend/resume actually _worked_ most of the time, and now all
| of that has been swapped out wholesale by a set of states that
| are at least an order of magnitude more complicated.
|
| This. I _want_ suspend /deep sleep. I don't mind slow wake; and
| I definitely don't want bluetooth, wifi, etc running while it's
| supposed to be idle. 90% of the issues with Windows on Laptops
| waking and causing them to overheat in backpacks is because of
| this bullshit half-sleep/smart-sleep they've started adding
| _and_ forcing users to live with.
|
| At least let _me_ , as an informed person, choose to allow my
| laptop to suspend still.
| astrange wrote:
| There's no cost to "bluetooth wifi etc" being on and not
| doing anything unless you're operating an RF chamber or have
| the security needs of a head of state.
|
| It doesn't significantly affect battery life; any time in
| your own life you've spent thinking about this would be
| better spent playing with your dog, or getting a dog so you
| can play with it.
| wtallis wrote:
| Keeping WiFi and BT on usually means you're keeping the
| PCIe and USB links on (or at least waking up frequently),
| which means you're also preventing the processor from
| staying in a low-power state where all the IO is power-
| gated. Once the display is powered off, getting the rest of
| the components to be properly asleep can reduce idle power
| by another order of magnitude.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Heck, it probably works great on Apple computers for the
| same reasons._
|
| Nope, the very first (and last) time that I suspended my
| Macbook and stuffed it in a backpack, it was hot to the touch
| when I went to go take it out. I looked online and everyone was
| just advising each other to power down every time they wanted
| to take their laptop anywhere. So no, Apple can't get it right
| either. FFS, will OS vendors please just let me hibernate to
| disk like the old days?
| rrdharan wrote:
| You can hibernate to disk on macOS (even with modern M1
| Macs). It's a pmset option.
| astrange wrote:
| It is there, but hibernation is a pain to implement since
| it doesn't have much in common with other OS functions, so
| eg device driver engineers don't enjoy
| implementing/maintaining it much.
|
| It is useful in laptops as a last ditch effort to avoid
| losing data when the battery dies, but that's one reason
| phones don't implement it even though their batteries die
| much more often.
| [deleted]
| minusf wrote:
| sorry to hear your bad experience. i close the lid multiple
| times a day on 2 m1 macbooks and i really have to rake my
| brains to remember when it failed. in 7 years i had the
| "taking it out hot from a backpack" exactly 1x (with intel).
| that's a track record i am super happy with.
|
| on the other hand i got macos black screens of death for a
| year as the last stage of every reboot... apple is by far not
| flawless. but i cant imagine using windows as a daily driver.
| the shit to put up with is just endless. and it makes my eyes
| bleed
| Const-me wrote:
| > but also Windows users
|
| I'm a Windows user, and I can confirm. My HP ProBook 445 G8
| laptop doesn't support any of the proper S1-S3 sleep states.
|
| Luckily, I discovered that before any hardware has failed due
| to overheating, by reading the output of `powercfg
| /availablesleepstates` console command. To workaround, I have
| set up the OS to hibernate when the lid is closed, instead of
| going to sleep.
| est31 wrote:
| The weird thing is, not even Mac OS is doing it on that
| hardware: they just do proper S3 suspend. I think the advantage
| of this "modern standby" feature is that you can sometimes wake
| up and do some minor processing. But I'm not sure that linuxes
| actually make use of that functionality.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > But I'm not sure that linuxes actually make use of that
| functionality.
|
| It's funny, the answer is both yes and no. I have a funky
| Skylake CPU in my current travel laptop, and one of it's cool
| party tricks is that Linux can drop the CPU into suspend
| state just by limiting the CPU to it's lowest frequency. I've
| seen it drop all the way down to 400mhz when leaving it
| alone, which gives me a chuckle.
|
| Totally useless for the "power nap" functionality you're
| thinking of, but ironically useful for certain other use-
| cases.
| est31 wrote:
| Can you expand on the use cases it's useful for?
| smoldesu wrote:
| If I'm watching video or editing text I'll often drop
| into the lowest availible CPU power setting to save on
| battery and keep the system below 30c.
| mjg59 wrote:
| Running the CPU constantly at 400MHz is likely to consume
| more power than bursty workloads at full speed. There are
| various linked clock domains, and if the CPU cores can't
| get into low power states then neither can other bits of
| hardware on the SoC.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| In my experience, the macbook's sleep mode isn't very
| effective. But if I turn the machine entirely off and turn it
| back on later, it does a good job loading all my apps back the
| way they were. Functionally, the experience is similar to the
| old days of "hibernate".
| mort96 wrote:
| > But if I turn the machine entirely off and turn it back on
| later, it does a good job loading all my apps back the way
| they were.
|
| ...If you don't really use the terminal at all, and don't
| mind a really slow "resume".
| binkHN wrote:
| Wow. The effort here is amazing--sad Apple won't provide for more
| assistance. If it wasn't for this project, OpenBSD on Apple
| silicon (thank you kettenis@!) likely wouldn't exist.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > sad Apple won't provide for more assistance
|
| I am missing why we think they are not doing so continuously,
| perhaps behind the scenes
| mhh__ wrote:
| Apple really don't go in for that kind of thing.
|
| Spiritually it's your device but their ego
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I _really_ don 't think marcan and co have some secret
| backchannel with Apple. If nothing else, a lot of their
| coding sessions are streamed live on Youtube, so you can see
| them reverse engineering stuff in real time.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I have to say, I don't entirely understand Apple's approach
| here.
|
| Apple spent significant engineering effort modifying their iOS
| bootloader to support third-party OSs--then neglected to tell
| anyone how to actually make a third-party OS. _Whoops! Have
| fun!_
|
| And to be clear, this is absolutely preferable to Apple selling
| fully locked-down Macs. And, I realize that macOS will always
| be Apple's first priority, and that writing documentation takes
| effort.
|
| But would it really kill Apple to connect Marcan to an
| engineer, who could allocate 30 minutes a week to answering
| questions? Is there some sort of legal liability involved?
| Security concerns? Brand safety?
|
| The Asahi team is comprised of people who clearly enjoy
| reverse-engineering, and if everyone is having fun (and
| creating an awesome Linux port in the process), perhaps that's
| all that matters. But I still find Apple's choices confusing.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Apple spent significant engineering effort modifying their
| iOS bootloader to support for third-party OSs--then neglected
| to tell anyone how to actually make a third-party OS. Whoops!
| Have fun!
|
| This tend to be the usual practice for much of what Apple
| does, release things with minimal documentation and let
| others figure out how it works.
|
| Maybe it's just a sadist corporation who wants to see how far
| people are willing to go in order to get stuff working with
| their own hardware/software? Sometimes it certainly seems
| that way.
| titzer wrote:
| They certainly have a penchant for randomly crapping on
| people that don't do things the Officially Supported
| Way(TM). For example, one rev of MacOS changed the ABI for
| the gettimeofday() kernel system call. That broke Golang
| (and Virgil). Apple didn't care. They want you go through
| libc for some reason. Uh, no, don't break userspace.
| 0x0 wrote:
| Microsoft also changes the kernel syscalls between
| releases. It's not unusual for operating systems to
| specify ABI at the libc level, in fact I believe Linux is
| the odd one out to specify ABI at the syscall level.
|
| https://j00ru.vexillium.org/syscalls/nt/64/
| titzer wrote:
| I know. Solaris has/had a stable ABI.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Apple has been crystal clear since 1999 that syscalls are
| not ABI on Darwin. Linus chose to draw that line
| differently, which is fine; Linux is a different
| environment.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's mostly frustrating that this is _still_ the rhetoric
| from Apple now that they are the largest company in modern
| existence. They _have_ the faculties to release their Unix
| drivers and even provide world-class Linux support while
| still profiting heavily from their hardware sales. Yet,
| they don 't. Every time they're given an opportunity to err
| on the side of freedom or choice, they shrug.
|
| This is an ongoing problem that has prevented me from
| daily-driving MacOS since Catalina. Really a stance I wish
| Apple would revert, even Microsoft does a better job here
| than Apple.
| tpush wrote:
| > [...] even Microsoft does a better job here than Apple.
|
| How so?
| smoldesu wrote:
| For one, they helped build Linux drivers for NTFS.
| Despite Apple promising to document and open-source APFS,
| they still have not gotten around to it (which makes
| interop with Macs really frustrating). There are lots of
| little things, too - Microsoft packages desktop apps for
| Linux and made pretty great OSS contributions like the
| Monaco editor. The list could go on, but this really
| shouldn't be surprising. Apple doesn't even treat
| upstream BSD with respect, it's insane to think that they
| would respect Linux.
| my123 wrote:
| For APFS, they did release some docs at:
| https://developer.apple.com/support/downloads/Apple-File-
| Sys...
| minusf wrote:
| yes, microsoft is truly amazing, where is their patent
| free exfat implementation?
|
| that is the only true modern interop fs and they keep it
| hostage.
| bch wrote:
| > Apple doesn't even treat upstream BSD with respect,
| it's insane to think that they would respect Linux.
|
| Meanwhile from Microsoft:
|
| * https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/emips/
|
| * https://www.netbsd.org/ports/emips/index.html
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| > " _it 's mostly frustrating that this is still the
| rhetoric from Apple now that they are the largest company
| in modern existence._"
|
| But _why should it change_? They 've become the most
| profitable for sure, but they became that while ignoring
| docs etc. Why should they now change, considering it's
| been unquestionable proven that it doesn't matter for
| their financial success?
|
| PS: i still don't understand how people some people call
| it _largest_ , doesn't that adjective describe _size_...?
| It doesn 't have the most employees, it doesn't have the
| most locations etc. It definitely has the largest pile of
| money, but that's still a very unfitting description for
| that, at least in my opinion, as that's usually called
| richest.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > But why should it change?
|
| Because I'm not buying Macbooks anymore. In fact, over
| the past 5 years I've increasingly seen people develop on
| a dedicated Linux box or Linux VM. Apple's appeal is
| shrinking to developers, and it has been on a steady
| decline for the past 10 years. For all of MacOS' POSIX
| certification, it hasn't stopped people from trying to
| implement Linux just so they can run privacy-respecting
| software and benign GPU libraries that Apple refuses to
| officially support.
|
| Their plan here isn't working. It might placate the 80%
| of users who don't care about this stuff, but the
| technical sentiment towards Apple's technologies is
| waning. I'm frustrated with WebKit, I'm frustrated with
| Swift, and _everyone_ is frustrated with their 30% tax.
| Something has to give, and it 's probably going to be
| Apple's facade of benevolence.
|
| > It definitely has the largest pile of money, but that's
| still a very unfitting description for that, at least in
| my opinion.
|
| All businesses are constrained by a set of limiting
| factors. The most important factor will always be
| capital, since you can trade it for any one of the lesser
| factors. Apple uses their 200 billion USD cash reserve to
| buy goodwill in the form of advertising, first-in-line
| tickets to TSMC and the finest lobbyists in the nation.
| They have every protection that lesser companies do not,
| which is why their valuation supersedes any other
| publicly or privately traded organization.
|
| I'll stop calling them the biggest company when business
| stops revolving around money.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Lol Apple doesn't care about users like you. You and your
| like not buying MacBooks has virtually zero impact on
| them.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _Because I 'm not buying Macbooks anymore._
|
| You're not but many people still are [0]. Many people
| started to see Apple's developer experience wane in
| previous years, true, but their Apple Silicon changed
| that. Their price/performance/battery life ratio is
| simply unbeatable for devs and anecdotally many people I
| know bought AS Macs where before they would've bought or
| used a Windows or Linux computer, including me.
|
| There are some things I will agree with you on though,
| such as their 30% tax, as a mobile developer myself.
|
| [0] 2021 Mac shipments grew twice as fast as overall PC
| shipments - https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/2021-mac-
| shipments-growth/
| smoldesu wrote:
| With all due respect, if you're a mobile developer you
| don't get much of a choice which laptop you buy. A
| Macbook is the only machine that lets you meaningfully
| deploy to iOS, so I'm not sure if I agree that
| Windows/Linux machines were competing products.
|
| Apple Silicon only reverses their hardware quality (which
| was truly awful 2015-2018). Their software quality has
| still been in rapid decline since Mojave, and it's
| developer experience out-of-the-box is still marred with
| coreutils older than dinosaurs and increased restrictions
| around running software. I know a lot of developers that
| are happy with Apple Silicon, but I know exactly 0
| developers that don't complain MacOS.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| You're right, I do complain about macOS. I guess the
| stuff I'm doing isn't as dependent on the OS itself (web,
| mobile dev) so I don't see the same problems as others
| might who are working on lower level stuff.
|
| I used to use tools like Codemagic which ran macOS in the
| cloud for deploying mobile apps, so buying a MacBook
| wasn't necessarily a blocker for me.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| > _Something has to give, and it 's probably going to be
| Apple's facade of benevolence._
|
| Honestly speaking, Apples main success vector has always
| been it's marketing. It's never been benevolent, and if
| you ever thought it was... I'm afraid you've only
| witnessed first hand how effective they are at their job.
|
| > _I 'll stop calling them the biggest company when
| business stops revolving around money. _
|
| I admit that I'm not a native speaker, but that's exactly
| the reason why that adjective confuses me so much.
|
| Bigger/largest directly translates over but nobody would
| consider bigger to be _better_ in a financial context.
| Profitability is the thing that 's interesting, and to a
| lesser extend how rich is is.
|
| Calling it biggest/largest doesn't (to me) say anything
| particularly interesting about it
| nemothekid wrote:
| I think we are ascribing too much to this as some corporate
| apple policy when the reality is closer to a single
| engineer or engineering lead believes the hardware would be
| open, but _Apple_ is not going to spend any resources
| behind that.
|
| So you have engineering teams with hacker ethos building
| "open" hardware, but Apple the company doesn't really give
| a shit and is not going to spend money on documentation for
| a feature the company doesn't care about.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I take your point, but I have to imagine Tim Cook (or
| someone just under him) signed off on opening the
| bootloader. It's not like the executive team doesn't know
| about it.
|
| Allowing an engineer to answer questions for half an hour
| a week would be practically a rounding error in terms of
| resources, and certainly less of a commitment than
| rewriting iBoot policy, which they already did.
| bombcar wrote:
| We're not really privy to how it got through (I could
| imagine some engineer/manager somewhere arguing that
| allowing it open would change some obscure tax/import
| filing somewhere).
| imiric wrote:
| Apple's entire business model heavily depends on vertical
| integration. They use their software to attract customers to
| their hardware, and viceversa. Users running alternative OSs
| on their hardware doesn't tie them into their software
| ecosystem.
|
| That, and they don't give a crap about the open source
| community, unless it directly benefits them. They have zero
| incentive to help a group of hackers run Linux on their
| hardware that will only benefit a niche of a niche of users.
| Allocating any of their engineers' time to this project would
| ultimately result in a negative ROI.
|
| TBH I'm surprised Asahi Linux hasn't received a C&D notice
| yet. Apple hasn't been this tolerant of hackintosh projects
| before, so at least they're turning a blind eye to this.
|
| Why anyone would want to spend their free time working in
| such a hostile environment is beyond me, but hats off to the
| Asahi team for the dedication. The patience and talent
| required must be extraordinary.
| minusf wrote:
| i'm not saying this can't be true, but why leave the boot
| loader open then?
| colonwqbang wrote:
| This is exactly the opposite of hackintosh. A hackintosh is
| "pirated" Apple software running on non-Apple hardware.
|
| These are people who have bought genuine Apple hardware -
| putting money in Apple's pocket. Then they want to write
| some custom software for their computer.
|
| I don't see how this threatens Apple in any way. The
| intersection between general Apple users and those who want
| to run "a remix of Arch Linux ARM" on their $1000 hardware
| has to be pretty small anyway.
|
| Actually it could open up a new market for Apple. I for one
| am quite impressed by Apple hardware, but have minimal
| interest in running their software. If Asahi becomes stable
| enough, I would seriously consider buying Apple.
|
| Your second point is a good one, however.
| throwaway19318 wrote:
| > And, I also realize that writing documentation requires
| effort.
|
| For Apple's hardware, the documentation exists. It's
| comprehensive. It's just not being released. (This is not the
| case for software.)
|
| Source: Apple employee.
|
| But this attitude is common in the hardware industry. This
| particular situation is a bit unusual because most of the
| time, Linux drivers either are developed with _no_ support
| from the hardware vendor (something which wouldn 't have been
| possible here due to secure boot) or are developed by the
| hardware vendor itself. But in the second case, it's common
| for no documentation to be released along with the driver,
| leaving independent parties to glean what they can from
| register names and other definitions in the source code. Or
| if documentation is released, it only covers the parts that
| drivers are supposed to access, excluding what would be
| needed to, say, write a custom firmware to replace the
| included blob.
| jmull wrote:
| > I don't entirely understand Apple's approach here.
|
| They've just decided they don't want to be in the business of
| supporting Linux on Apple hardware.
|
| Short of fully supporting Linux, the "Whoops! Have fun!" part
| would happen somewhere, no matter where the line was drawn.
|
| Of course they could do more. But you and I shouldn't really
| expect to be able to tell Apple how to spend their money.
| [deleted]
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > You and I shouldn't really expect to be able to tell
| Apple how to spend their money.
|
| I don't, I just think Apple chose to draw the line in a
| perplexing location. I'd love to know what they were
| thinking.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Pure speculation on my part
|
| Perhaps it was "targeted" for some internal skunkworks
| project to get _Windows_ running on ARM Macs? Linux /BSD
| obviously got there first (at least in the open) and
| Microsoft is under a Qualcomm only contract _for now_
|
| Microsoft can't directly request that Apple allow booting
| their OS, or work with them directly. But "leaving a
| spare key under the doormat" is a bit more innocent
| looking
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I think it's precisely this. Even just providing specs or
| engineering time can be seen as "support" on some level and
| Apple doesn't want any responsibility whatsoever associated
| with that. They're avoiding external dependency at all
| costs.
| belfalas wrote:
| This is my slightly-conspiracy guess: Apple has oodles of old
| hardware lying around that they would like to keep using but
| is either too old for macOS or they want to use it for
| backend services (prod or non-prod, doesn't matter). Think
| capital expense budget. So if Apple can run Linux on all that
| hardware, that's a lot of computing power still available for
| years to come. And if you can get the OSS community to do it
| for you for free - even better!
| moistly wrote:
| Maybe the approach is to do the minimum to avoid being
| successfully prosecuted as a monopoly. "It's not locked down;
| there are alternatives freely available!"
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| Apple already provided way more than anyone expected(making it
| very easy to dual boot).
| capableweb wrote:
| Did people really expect Apple to prevent dual booting? Not
| only have they never prevented it before, but also they would
| for sure be getting into hot water legally if they start
| selling computers where there wasn't the possibility.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Leading up to and for a short time after the M-series
| announcement, the resulting "locking down" of the Mac was a
| commonly voiced suspicion/concern, to the point that to
| this day, many tech-adjacent online discussion participants
| who don't follow Apple think that M-series Macs have the
| same boot restrictions as iOS devices.
| [deleted]
| dijit wrote:
| > Did people really expect Apple to prevent dual booting?
|
| Yes, iPhones and iPad's don't allow it and Microsoft
| doesn't allow it on it's ARM based OS. (enforced
| secureboot; detailed slightly here:
| https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/SurfaceRT#Secure_Boot )
|
| There was no expectation on my side that they would support
| it.
| capableweb wrote:
| On their computers they have never prevented it before,
| sorry if the previous comment was unclear about that we
| were talking about computers/laptops, not mobile devices.
| supreme_berry wrote:
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > On their computers they have never prevented it before
|
| _" What's a computer?"_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S5BLs51yDQ
|
| I really don't know what to call iOS devices other than
| computers. Unless one of your requirements for "computer"
| is "ability to boot third party OSs"; I don't entirely
| disagree with that but it's a bit circulatory in this
| context.
| smoldesu wrote:
| An iPhone is a computer. An iPad is a computer. A Macbook
| is a computer.
|
| Any questions?
| capableweb wrote:
| iPhone is a phone, iPad is a tablet, Mac are computers.
| This is generally what people understand when you talk
| about the different product segment Apple divides their
| products in. I'd probably call of them "computing
| devices", but I think in general it is pretty clear what
| I'm referring to when I say "Apple's computers", at least
| to people outside of Hacker News. I think pretty much 0%
| of the people I spend time with AFK would think "Ah, he
| must be talking about the iPhone" if I said something
| like that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Anecdote: I teach coding to children, including
| occasional private lessons in client homes. For the
| latter, families need to supply computers, which one
| client didn't realize. I managed on the first day by
| having the two girls pass my personal laptop back and
| fourth, but I made it clear they'd need to each bring a
| computer next week.
|
| So I was a bit surprised the following week when one of
| them showed up with an iPad! But, it had that attachable
| keyboard and trackpad Apple sells, and it really did work
| fine in the web-based environments we use.
|
| Broadly speaking, I agree that _most_ people think of
| Macs as computers and iPads as iPads, but I don 't think
| that distinction is meaningful. Macs and iPads are
| marketed for most of the same things, and Apple has even
| begun touting how they have the same chips inside!
| dijit wrote:
| But they also never went to great lengths to allow it,
| culminating in a terrible experience with the T2 chip:
| https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/apple-t2-chip-linux-
| mac-...
|
| So, again, it was not looking positive.
| capableweb wrote:
| That was never the case, seems the article you linked is
| based on a misunderstanding. See
| https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/11/apple-t2-chip-cant-
| boot-...
|
| Even with the T2 chip, it was possible to turn off Secure
| Boot 100% so you could boot whatever operating system you
| wanted.
|
| Just as a disclaimer, I'm no Apple fanboy, I stopped
| using their software/OS even before I got rid of my last
| MacBook, and since 2018 or something haven't been using
| the hardware neither and only use a Mac for testing
| various software I develop. So I don't normally defend
| anything they are doing.
|
| But right should be right; they have never previously
| tried to stop people from running whatever OS they want
| on their computer hardware so guessing they suddenly
| would start, feels like a pretty far-out guess.
| dijit wrote:
| I tried to do this myself, I was greeted with a fan that
| was on 100%, a non-functioning keyboard and trackpad and
| USB ports that were roughly half functional.
|
| It's a falsehood to say it was allowed.
|
| It was possible but very much not how you seem to imply.
| galad87 wrote:
| That was because of missing drivers, or drivers that
| needed to be modified a bit (like the nvme driver), it
| had nothing to do with a locked down boot loader.
| dijit wrote:
| Not sure where you got that I said it was a boot loader
| problem.
|
| I'm not sure if you're deliberately missing the point
| either.
|
| The point was that the trend seemed to be locked down
| devices more and more, not that it was impossible before;
| just that it was getting more and more difficult- and
| that it was already difficult on arm platforms.
| galad87 wrote:
| The article you linked said so.
| nemothekid wrote:
| If your keyboard and trackpad is non-functional that
| means you are missing drivers. Apple is not preventing
| you from dual booting, but Apple is also not going to
| write drivers for their trackpad for linux. Apple is not
| locking the system down, but they are saying if you want
| it to work on Linux, write the drivers yourself.
|
| This is exactly what is happening with Asahi linux. The
| ARM bootloader to install Linux, but they aren't helping
| the Asahi linux developers write a GPU driver. They are
| not locking the platform down, they are simply saying you
| can do what you want, but don't expect any help from us.
| capableweb wrote:
| That sounds like the kernel/distro you were using didn't
| quite support the hardware you were trying to use, rather
| than a problem of a company trying to prevent you from
| booting a OS on said device.
| Vogtinator wrote:
| AFAIK the enforced SB without allowing "3rd-party" keys
| is specific to (32bit ARM!) RT devices, which are
| obsolete. The current line of "Windows on Arm" devices
| (various Laptops and their "Volterra" dev kit) allow
| turning off secure boot.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| Kind of ridiculous that with so many of the top latent using
| Linux in 2022, we still have to resort to this to have it as our
| main OS on our preferred hardware.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sounds like the sort of problem your preferred hardware vendor
| can fix.
| tbrock wrote:
| Isn't it more absurd that no vendors who support Linux make
| acceptable/comparable hardware?
| snvzz wrote:
| There's hope in RISC-V.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Man, I'm surprised to hear that's the case
|
| I assumed that Macs were mostly preferred because of their UX
| and relatively high-quality drivers/OS working well with
| sleep/wake. But if you put linux on there, you're giving all
| that up
|
| Are there not any linux laptops out there with decent build
| quality and comparable perf/battery life?
| foobarian wrote:
| > of their UX and relatively high-quality drivers/OS
| working well with sleep/wake.
|
| The hardware integration UX is the good part of Macs. The
| UI UX is inferior to Linux IMO. I'm not referring to any
| one DE in particular, just the fact that they are so
| customizable. I wish I could have Windowmaker again on
| hardware as rock solid as my MBP (and all the integration
| bits solved, i.e. audio, wi-fi, plug-n-play, multiple
| monitors, etc.).
| ZiiS wrote:
| The are not any Windows laptops with comparable
| perf/battery life either.
| jm4 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Aside from the processor, there really isn't anything
| particularly compelling to me about the hardware. Apple's
| forte is how they integrate the whole hardware package with
| good software. The build quality is better than most but
| not especially great. That's not really saying much when
| you consider the low quality of so many others out there.
| The keyboards are terrible and I had serious reliability
| issues with the last couple Macs I used. The battery life
| probably comes as much from the OS as it does from the
| hardware. Support is generally acceptable if you pay for
| AppleCare, although you can sometimes end up waiting a
| couple weeks for certain repairs.
|
| The Asahi team is doing great work, but I can't help but
| feel like Linux will always be a second class citizen on
| Apple hardware. I understand it still appeals to some
| people. It's not for me, though.
|
| I'm using a ThinkPad now. It's ok. It's well supported in
| Linux and Lenovo still provides good support. I think the
| plan I paid for includes next day repairs. I like that it
| actually has a variety of ports unlike some of the others
| that cheap out. It's more repairable than most laptops out
| there. I will probably get a Framework next time or maybe
| System76. If I was into MacOS, I'd get a MacBook without a
| doubt, but I just don't like the OS very much anymore.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Aside from the processor, there really isn't anything
| particularly compelling to me about the hardware.
|
| Yeah, but I find the processor pretty damn compelling.
|
| And then the rest of the hardware is--if not remarkable--
| very solid, so the computer is an enticing package.
| cesarb wrote:
| > And then the rest of the hardware is--if not remarkable
| --very solid, so the computer is an enticing package.
|
| A bit offtopic, but I've been a bit annoyed lately that
| we have to treat the computer as a _package_. Why should
| my choice of keyboard (Brazilian ABNT2) and trackpad (I
| want three physical buttons) restrict my choices of CPU
| or screen?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Has this ever not been the case for small form factor
| laptops? I think it's mostly just a practical reality of
| manufacturing. Although I have been really impressed with
| what Framework is doing!
| tpush wrote:
| > Are there not any linux laptops out there with decent
| build quality and comparable perf/battery life?
|
| None that I've ever seen, especially now compared to M1
| Macs.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| My lamentation goes well beyond Apple's business practices
| and I agree with you wholeheartedly. I am hoping Framework +
| AMD might get close sometime in the next couple of years.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There is plenty of other hardware that is comparable. In
| fact- numerous laptops exceed them in a number of specs.
|
| "Isn't it absurd that no vendors who support Linux are making
| Apple laptops?"
| pas wrote:
| Please recommend one (or more)! I want to buy a new laptop
| for years. Last time I got so fed up with the available
| ones I just bought two second hand laptops for cheap. A
| small XPS and a big Lenovo (as a backup and for compile
| heavy development work).
| purerandomness wrote:
| Dell XPS 13 with an UHD screen is the closest you can
| get.
|
| Again, the problem is that the hardware and the software
| are not optimized to work well with each other as much as
| Mac hardware and MacOS. Dell's fingerprint sensors do not
| work on Linux due to undocumented specs, and
| sleep/suspend doesn't work (the laptop will overheat in
| your backpack)
| halostatue wrote:
| No one else makes a laptop that has the power / thermal /
| battery / weight spec combination that Apple does, and none
| of them are ARM laptops, either.
|
| To exceed the Apple M1 / M2 specs with anyone else's
| hardware, you need to give up on other specs that matter
| greatly to those of us who care about things like that.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Oh. I forgot that power/thermal/weight is the only spec
| that matters.
|
| The point is that not everyone cares as much about
| perf/watt and there are plenty of comparable computers
| which surpass Apple laptops in different areas.
| Jcowell wrote:
| > power/thermal/weight is the only spec that matters.
|
| For a _laptop_ these specs hold considerable weight.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/build-linux-kernel
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The M1 Air is almost three pounds, not that a lightweight
| laptop.
| spookie wrote:
| They do make good laptops though? Look, let's not dive into
| the whole ARM vs x86 thing, it's not their fault.
| ericol wrote:
| One thing I observe in the latest OS update (Ventura) is that
| they made HUGE improvements in memory management (MacBook M1, 8
| GB).
|
| Before, Firefox would bring the laptop to a crawl with ~200 tabs
| (Yeah, I know). Having PHPStorm open at the same time was a sure
| machine killer.
|
| Just today I found myself casually with close to 350 tabs, while
| at the same time working in PHPStorm with no issues.
|
| In my experience (My previous box was a Thinkpad T430 with 16 GB
| of RAM running Debian) linux is far from this good handling
| memory.
|
| Also, the state management in MacOS is equal to no one. I have a
| Lenovo Thinkbook 15 (I7), and having to wait for it to restart
| when I open the lid is excruciating. I should put a "This is my
| pos laptop" on it.
| tomcam wrote:
| This is not criticism, more like wonderment and curiosity. At
| 200-300 tabs, isn't it just faster to do a web search or
| organized bookmarks? Or do you just Ctrl-Tab at light speed
| through them when you need to find something?
| belfalas wrote:
| I am one of the 200 tab people but it's not all in one
| browser window. I use a Firefox extension called 'Simple Tab
| Groups' that let me categorize the tabs to get back to them
| later. I use it as a mini-knowledge base (I'm not that
| attached to my tabs if I lose them, I use Yojimbo for my real
| KB).
|
| But just to say it: I also freak out when I see someone with
| so many tabs open that it's like a little Joy Division cover
| on the top of their browser.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| But to parent's question, what does having them open allow
| you to do?
|
| I understand the existential dread of closing a useful-or-
| interesting-but-unread tab. But isn't this what bookmarks
| were created to solve?
| hewlett wrote:
| You can search tabs on firefox if you add % to the address
| bar
| tomcam wrote:
| TIL! That is slick
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > isn't it just faster to do a web search or organized
| bookmarks
|
| As someone who has a lot of browser tabs, unfortunately no.
| It's often near impossible to remember the magic query that
| yielded a particular site as a result and the problem with
| bookmarks is the overhead that comes with organizing them --
| most tabs sit in an uncanny valley between long-term
| usefulness and disposability which would require frequent
| clean up passes through bookmarks to keep one's bookmarks in
| a reasonable state.
|
| And as noted by others, these tabs are typically organized by
| both windows (e.g. one window for apple platform dev stuff,
| one for android dev, one for shopping, etc) as well as tab
| groups within those windows.
| bombcar wrote:
| Many things in memory management are stuck in the late 90s,
| where assumptions are made about disk vs memory vs cache that
| are no longer true.
|
| Memory is still much faster than SSD but it is not as insanely
| faster as it was compared to spinning rust. And compression is
| a huge thing now, too.
| Vinnl wrote:
| That might also be related to Firefox improvements:
| https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/10/improving-firefox-responsi...
| jorvi wrote:
| Didn't Firefox just ship a big RAM improvement update (105)?
| zamadatix wrote:
| I wonder if if there is a safe value we could clamp audio to now
| and recompile that the speakers may not be loud but would at
| least be usable without being unsafe (I know there is an option
| to just enable them outright and recompile right now).
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| The pace of work that's being done, with a lack of documentation,
| has been very impressive.
| Thaxll wrote:
| My dream, using Apple hardware with Linux will finaly happen some
| day.
| willio58 wrote:
| I mean I ran ubuntu on my mac natively back 5 years ago. Ran
| pretty well!
| lynx23 wrote:
| I was very happy with Debian on my MacBook Air roughly 10 years
| ago. I am a non-GUI type of guy, so I might have missed
| quibbles that other people had around that.
| kjsthree wrote:
| Also very excited about the progress Asahi is making. I did
| technically live your dream though in 2003 with YDL on my G3
| iBook. It was... ok.
| kijiki wrote:
| I ran Debian on my Pismo PowerBook from 2000-2008, because it
| was the only thing that could reliably suspend/resume. Switched
| to ThinkPads because Linux suspend/resume on x86 had gotten
| pretty reliable by then.
| tomcam wrote:
| The whole passage on speaker support on laptops blew me away. I
| knew I was vaguely impressed that you can get such
| (comparatively) good sound on ultralight laptops, but didn't know
| what was happening under the hood. Quick sample:
|
| > Modern micro-speakers require sophisticated software EQ to
| sound good, but they also require sophisticated safety models!
| The most critical safety parameter for micro-speakers is the
| temperature of the voice coil: you don't want to melt the thing
|
| They destroyed their own tweeter while testing!
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