[HN Gopher] OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux ___________________________________________________________________ OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux Author : simjue Score : 387 points Date : 2023-06-06 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (asahilinux.org) (TXT) w3m dump (asahilinux.org) | DCKing wrote: | I wonder if the new Mac Pro's full PCI Express support resolves | any limitations that prevents people from using GPUs over | Thunderbolt on existing Apple Silicon hardware (this is | apparently a hardware limitation). | | Although the Mac Pro's PCIe extensibility makes it a pretty | mystifying niche product from Apple without providing memory and | GPU expandability, once Asahi Linux gets running on there you | should be able to not get the full abilities of the latest Vulkan | and full OpenGL 4.6 by putting in a recent AMD card. The open | source Radeon drivers should "just work" on ARM as they do in the | Talos II POWER-based workstation, if they can be stably | initialized that is. Heck, Nvidia publishes a binary Linux | aarch64 driver and they sound petty enough with Apple to try to | make that work. | | You could have Asahi Linux running and delegate any not-yet- | supported hardware to the 7 PCIe devices it supports. Would be | quite a mighty ARM Linux workstation. Again though - only if | Apple has the PCI Express support for it. | stirlo wrote: | @Marcan shared some technical details around their PCI Express | implementation recently here: | https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110494017883893557 | | It seems they didn't make any massive changes and instead just | put switches on the existing PCI-E Lanes. That probably doesn't | bode well for full GPU support :( | endorphine wrote: | Kinda irrelevant but Asahi is the topic on HN that gets me | excited the most. Can't wait to have such a great hardware for my | daily driver. | | -- a happy ThinkPad Debian user | fsiefken wrote: | When Vulkan drivers are ready maybe the Asahi Linux perhaps also | be ready to run some SteamVR apps | https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/blob/mast... | pkulak wrote: | I'm surprised that Vulkan wasn't the target, which could then | have something like Zink layered on top for OpenGL. | lonjil wrote: | Zink requires a fairly advanced Vulkan driver, with many | complex optional extensions. A basic Vulkan driver wouldn't | cut it. So getting basic OpenGL working is much less work, | especially since they can share a lot of work with Mesa's | existing OpenGL drivers. | kirbyfan64sos wrote: | This gets mentioned basically every time. The gist is that: | | - OpenGL is a much easier target to support, in terms of | having a functional desktop. Remember, hardware-accelerated | apps have been runnable on Asahi for _months_ now, while | Vulkan support is still a while away. - Most of the work | being done is common to OpenGL _and_ Vulkan, so it 's not | exactly a ton of wasted effort. | tormeh wrote: | Sorry, but what's the point? Why not just buy a Linux laptop and | have everything work out of the box? Why are Linux enthusiasts | putting so much effort into supporting hardware from companies | that - at best - ignore Linux? This question is also valid for | other manufacturers, btw, not just Apple. So much time wasted | doing free labor for hardware companies that will just break your | stuff with the next hardware iteration. | sliken wrote: | Apple makes good hardware and makes good engineering decisions. | Sure other laptop makers have low end and high end options. But | frustratingly often match apple on 50-75% of the features. Sure | some have nice still aluminum bodies. Some have screens that | match or beat apple's. Some have nice centered quality | touchpads and keyboards. Some have great battery life. Some | have great performance. | | Very few match on all aspects. I'd tried a few and always had | one terrible issue. Terrible battery life, lousy screen, and/or | terrible touchpad. Apple does seem willing to make improvements | without as much worry about backward compatibility. There are a | few that match on everything I care about, but often cost more | than the Apple. | | People like to complain and mention byzantine purchase methods. | Wait for a lenovo sale, buy the bare bones model, apply the | discount code, then buy dimms and SSDs from random bargain | basement sellers. Oh and buy the linux compatible wifi card and | do surgery on your laptop to get wifi working after suspend. | | MBA is pretty compelling mix of performance, size, cost, and | battery life. Unlike any x86-64 laptop, you can pay $500 more | or so and get double the memory bandwidth. Or another $500+ and | double it again. Definitely makes the macs better any PC at | some workloads. Sure some x86-64 with a nice discrete GPU is | way faster ... when plugged in to wall power. | paddim8 wrote: | The point? There are no other ARM laptops that are even close | to being competitive right now. I want a good fanless laptop. | My only choice is Apple. Asahi made it possible and I now have | a great experience. What's the problem? | [deleted] | solarkraft wrote: | What Linux laptop has comparable hardware? | sbuk wrote: | With that attitude, Linux and its ecosystem wouldn't exist. But | to answer your question; because they can and are having fun | doing so. | mschuster91 wrote: | > Why not just buy a Linux laptop and have everything work out | of the box? | | Because these things are rare as gold in the first place as | being Linux ready isn't a focus for most OEMs, sometimes | _severely_ lag behind the competition in feature support (e.g. | limited to UVC webcams with crap quality), have serious | availability issues (Framework), you have a tough time getting | service or spare parts, or barely any resale value, or limited | choices in screens (which is the one and only thing keeping me | from a Framework - who the fuck wants a 3:2 screen?). Also, | tough luck getting firmware updates for embedded components. | | Apple devices, spare parts and repair centers, in contrast, are | widely available across the world (okay, maybe not in places | sanctioned by the US), firmware updates come around when needed | and hold their resale value for _years_. | mk_stjames wrote: | For me, the Macbook Pro 14 with a 10-core M1 Pro I am typing on | has my favorite keyboard and trackpad I've ever used on a | laptop (2nd place was the 2013 MBP and this feels the same). It | has the best display I've ever set eyes on. | | The battery life is the best of any laptop I have ever used by | far. | | And the performance for number crunching is as high as any x86 | machine I had previously and per watt it blows everything out | of the water. And it is dead silent while doing so, whereas | every x86 'work' powered laptop I ever used would wind up | sounding like a jet engine with my workloads. | | So for someone who runs linux.. if they want to run it on | hardware that is this nice (to me at least)... this is it. This | is worth it. It's worth developing for. | | Also, Apple is going to stick with the M-series SOC's for a | long time now that they have switched. And they tend to keep | hardware interfaces for a long time too. So the development of | Asahi now will bear fruit for... at least the next decade I'd | say. | | I still use OSX for daily activities, but the kernel Asahi is | developing may be my plan to stretch this 2021 M1 MBP 14 out | hopefully to the year 2030, as MacOS moves on. My 2013 intel i7 | Macbook Pro made it to 2021... 8 years of daily use and world | travel. I was beyond the moon with that product performance and | I'm expecting similar from these new macbooks based on my | current 1.5 years of use. | lonjil wrote: | > Why not just buy a Linux laptop and have everything work out | of the box? Why are Linux enthusiasts putting so much effort | into supporting hardware from companies that - at best - ignore | Linux? | | Almost all laptops sold with Linux pre-installed or with | support advertized only work well with Linux due to volunteer | work similar to what is being done with Apple's stuff right | now. Almost everything is proprietary with close to zero | upstream support, you just don't notice it because the work has | already been done. | biomcgary wrote: | In an OSS ecosystem, manufacturers inherently have to use | work that has been done by volunteers! The real question is | whether they invest their own resources too. For example, | System76 has created their own distro, Pop OS. My team and I | were happy with the laptops purchased from them and the OS | integration provided a smooth experience. | nsonha wrote: | Are there commercially available arm-based linux laptops? I'm | not after horsepower just decent battery life and enough | computing power to do non-AI programming. | neonsunset wrote: | Far superior hardware. | kaba0 wrote: | > Why not just buy a Linux laptop | | Please tell me where is it because I will buy it instantly, and | I'm only half kidding. | | I don't see how making linux available on possibly the | currently available best laptop hardware any different to the | previous decades of hacking a working wifi driver into the | kernel. It was always an uphill battle, and we should be | thankful for those who take up the hard work! | cultofmetatron wrote: | system 76 makes linux ready hardware. personally I'm waiting | for a framework which does have some linux support | josephcsible wrote: | > Please tell me where is it because I will buy it instantly, | and I'm only half kidding. | | System76? Star Labs? Purism? HP Dev One? | sliken wrote: | HP Dev one works well, kudos to System76 for the desktop | env. | | It has the worst LCD panel I've seen in many years. It's | not the resolution just poor contrast and poor color | accuracy. It pains me to see it. | | They went on sale recently, I bought one, and shortly | afterwards (a few months ago) they stopped selling them. | hedora wrote: | System76 doesn't ship reasonable screens (they are all | 144Hz 1080p): | | https://system76.com/laptops-ultraportables | https://system76.com/laptops-powerful | | The only exception is the Bonobo, but it comes with a | discrete GPU, so its battery life + weight are going to | suck. Also, its keyboard is off center. | | Most of the star labs machines have low resolution | displays, but I can find nothing wrong with this one. If | you choose AMD, a reasonable config is $2600, which is | comparable to Apple. However, they are only building 10,000 | units, and taking preorders, so it might be unobtainable: | | https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter | | The purism offering seems OK except that it is a 10th | generation intel, and those were extremely bad, even by | recent intel standards. Maybe they'll get an AMD refresh | out the door with the same ergonomics. | | The HP has an off-centered keyboard and trackpad and a | 1080p display. | | So, of those four vendors, there's one model that's vaguely | competitive, but it's a limited production run pre-order. | ac29 wrote: | System76? Framework? Even Dell has a number of Linux laptops. | | If your requirements are "must run an Apple designed ARM | processor", then yes, your choices are pretty limited. | nsonha wrote: | ANY arm processor, do tell | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Any? https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Lenovo_IdeaPad_Fl | ex_3_Chr... is dirt cheap and runs PMOS quite well. | Actually Chromebooks in general are a good bet when | combined with PMOS - or even _not_ combined with PMOS, if | you can work with a normal Linux VM on top of ChromeOS. | zamadatix wrote: | From a follow up post on Mastadon | https://social.treehouse.systems/@AsahiLinux/110497512340479...: | | "Also in this update: | | We now have a cpuidle driver, which significantly lowers idle | power consumption by enabling deep CPU sleep. You should also get | better battery runtime both idle and during sleep, especially on | M1 Pro/Max machines. | | Thanks to the cpuidle driver, s2idle now works properly, which | should fix timekeeping issues causing journald to crash. | | Also thanks to the cpuidle driver, CPU boost states are now | enabled for single- and low-threaded workloads, noticeably | increasing single-core performance. | | Thermal throttling is now enabled, which should keep thermals in | check on fanless (Air) models. There was never a risk of | overheating (as there are hard cutoffs), but the behavior should | now more closely match how macOS works, and avoid things getting | too toasty on your lap. | | Random touchpad instability woes should now finally be gone, | thanks to bugfixes in both the M1 (SPI) and M2 (MTP) touchpad | drivers. | | A bugfix to the audio subsystem that fixes stability issues with | the headphone jack codec. | | New firmware-based battery charge control, which offers fixed a | 75%/80% threshold setting. To use this, you need to update your | system firmware to at least version 13.0, which you can do by | simply updating your macOS partition to at least that version or | newer. This new charge control method also works in sleep mode. | | U-Boot now supports the Type A USB ports (and non-TB ports on the | iMac), so you can use a keyboard connected to any port to control | your bootloader. | | And last but not least, this kernel release includes base support | for the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra SoCs! We are not enabling installs on | these machines yet as we still have some loose ends to tie, but | you can expect to see support for this year's new hardware soon." | gigatexal wrote: | Such an amazing set of engineers jacking away at this. What | awesome work they're doing. | gigatexal wrote: | ugh ruined by autocorrect | | s/jacking/cracking | londons_explore wrote: | > e includes base support for the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra SoC | | Does this mean Apple gave them prerelease hardware early? Might | apple start helping these guys more - like for example donating | a 5 person dev team for a few months maybe? | sounds wrote: | M2 Pro/Max were available in January. I think they needed to | wait until now to be sure the M2 Ultra announcement didn't | have too huge of changes from the way the M1 Ultra was done. | In other words, the Asahi Linux team don't have an M2 Ultra | to test on, they are getting ready for when they can get some | test results, possibly from users. | | Please consider donating if you have the means. | https://asahilinux.org/support/ | GeekyBear wrote: | It means that Apple isn't radically changing the internals of | the SOC every year. | | >Apple's first iPhones ran on Samsung SoCs, and even as Apple | famously announced that they were switching to their own | designs, the underlying reality is that there was a slower | transition away from Samsung over multiple chip generations. | "Apple Silicon" chips, like any other SoC, contain IP cores | licensed from many other companies; for example, the USB | controller in the M1 is by Synopsys, and the same exact | hardware is also in chips by Rockchip, TI, and NXP. Even as | Apple switched their manufacturing from Samsung to TSMC, some | Samsung-isms stayed in their chips... and the UART design | remains to this day. | | https://asahilinux.org/2021/03/progress-report-january- | febru... | pbasista wrote: | I also appreciate the detail in which the Asahi team presents | the progress they have made. | | I do not follow Apple's release notes so I cannot compare. | vanburen wrote: | "New firmware-based battery charge control, which offers fixed | a 75%/80% threshold setting. To use this, you need to update | your system firmware to at least version 13.0, which you can do | by simply updating your macOS partition to at least that | version or newer. This new charge control method also works in | sleep mode." | | This is interesting, am I correct in thinking this a feature | implemented by Apple and now supported by the Asahi team? Does | that mean that macOS supports this charge control feature? | | I really hope Apple brings the same charge limiting to iPhone | as well. | GeekyBear wrote: | > I really hope Apple brings the same charge limiting to | iPhone as well. | | This was added to iPhones in 2019. | | > If your iPhone stops charging at 80%, it's most likely due | to a feature Apple introduced in iOS 13 called Optimized | Battery Charging. It aims to prevent over-stressing the | battery and hence extend the battery life of your iPhone by | limiting the charge to 80%. | | Your iPhone learns your usage patterns and delays 100% | charging until moments before you wake up in the morning. | | https://www.makeuseof.com/why-your-iphone-stops-charging- | at-... | vladvasiliu wrote: | It's a bit different, though. I don't often need my iphone | to last multiple days on end. Yet, if I keep it plugged in | as often as I'm sitting at a desk, it'll never go below | 80%. If I get it below 80%, sooner or later, it will figure | "i want to use it" and will charge it all the way to 100%. | The lowest my battery ever got on this phone was 40 | something when I was away for a weekend without a charger. | It's very rare I use it a lot, so the "intelligence" | clearly doesn't care how long the battery needs to last. | | The way it's implemented on my mom's android, it always | shows 80 or 85% (can't recall which one it is), even if she | leaves it plugged in for the whole weekend. | | On my HP laptop, if I activate the "battery saver mode" (as | opposed to "AI"), it reports the maximum capacity as | somewhere around 80% of the design capacity. I don't know | whether Linux cooperates with this, but probably not. HP | only talks about OS compatibility for the "AI" mode, which | not only requires Windows but a specific HP app. | GeekyBear wrote: | > It's a bit different, though. | | Yes. | | It learns your normal waking time (if you have one) and | gives you a full charge before you wake up. | | Which is what I want. A full charge for the working day, | without needlessly shortening the batteries functional | lifetime. | lonjil wrote: | My Sony Xperia 10 IV lets you set it to never charge | above 90 or 80 %, as an alternative to it learning your | habits. I have it set to 80%, and I've been unable to use | it up in under 2 days. I've heard that iPhones have | similarly good battery life as the 10 IV, so it seems, to | me, that get quite far on 80%. | GeekyBear wrote: | > I've been unable to use it up in under 2 days. | | Take up playing a resource intensive game like Genshin | Impact and you can very easily drain the battery in a | day. | | > 60fps highest settings 100% brightness Low sound Home | WiFi 3:20 total | | https://www.reddit.com/r/SonyXperia/comments/onb3dw/gensh | in_... | pezezin wrote: | I bought the same phone recently, and for my light usage | pattern (some texting, the browser, Google Translate, | Google Maps, a calculator app, and the camera), the | battery lasts almost 5 days! | | I had completely forgotten how it is to own a phone that | doesn't need to charge everyday... | vladvasiliu wrote: | Sure, but if I know I won't drain my battery more than | 10% that day, I can't tell it not to top it up more than | 80%. That's the case for me 99.9% of days. | | This also seems to work only if you've drained the | battery below 80%. If it says 90% and I plug it in? It'll | charge it fully right away. | GeekyBear wrote: | That's not how Apple's implementation works. | | It doesn't charge the battery over 80% at all, unless it | detects that you have a normal waking time, in which case | it charges fully right before you normally wake up. | | Unfortunately, other companies copied the 80% charge bit | without copying the part about figuring out if you have a | normal waking time and giving you a full charge right | before that. | | For instance, Samsung's S23: | | >Once you turn off the battery protection function, | you'll be able to charge your battery up to 100% | | https://www.samsung.com/ae/support/mobile- | devices/battery-pr... | brynet wrote: | > This is interesting, am I correct in thinking this a | feature implemented by Apple | | Yes, battery charge control is a hardware(/firmware) feature | supported on other modern laptops as well, such as the Lenovo | ThinkPads, but it's not a standard so it requires explicit | driver and OS support. | | OpenBSD recently added support for this as well for both of | these implementations (Apple silicon and ThinkPads). | | https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=168436150408382&w=2 | | https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=168458409622780&w=2 | | https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=168521616605492&w=2 | | I know certain Android/Samsung phones support this as well, | not sure about iOS/macOS. | londons_explore wrote: | If your laptop firmware doesn't support it, here is one | trick if you have a removable battery: | | Put a piece of paper over one of the batteries middle | contacts. That will make the firmware think the battery is | overheating. It will then refuse to charge, but will still | happily discharge. | | You can do that to keep your battery at 80% while still on | AC power. Handy if you operate from AC power 99% of the | time, yet don't want your battery to die from being stored | at 100% charge and hot for many years. | mschuster91 wrote: | > Put a piece of paper over one of the batteries middle | contacts. | | Bad, very bad idea if you don't know what you are doing - | depending on where the "smarts" in the BMS are, you may | damage your battery or make your BMS think the pack is | broken or prevent your BMS from recognizing a charge | state mismatch (and in the worst case, a cell going | undervoltage or reverse polarity) as you have a good | chance that you cut off one of the cell balancer | contacts. This trick only works with removable phone | batteries. | Thews wrote: | I am on macos 13.3.1 and have noticed this feature for at | least a couple of months, maybe longer. It says Charging On | Hold (Rarely Used On Battery) | windowsrookie wrote: | Optimized Battery charging has been available since Mac | OS 11. Works on intel MacBooks too. | | https://www.macworld.com/article/235001/macos-big-surs- | batte... | eisa01 wrote: | I can never get that to activate, even though I use my | MBP 14" 100% at home... | cyberax wrote: | > This is interesting, am I correct in thinking this a | feature implemented by Apple and now supported by the Asahi | team? Does that mean that macOS supports this charge control | feature? | | It does, but in a weird way. You can turn on "adaptive | charging" and it will randomly decide to charge to 80%. | | If you want to properly control it, just install the | wonderful AlDente utility ( https://apphousekitchen.com/ ). | Then you can manually control the max charge percentage. Mine | is permanently set to 80% because I never really use even 40% | of the battery on my M2-based laptop. | imbnwa wrote: | >And last but not least, this kernel release includes base | support for the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra SoCs! We are not enabling | installs on these machines yet as we still have some loose ends | to tie, but you can expect to see support for this year's new | hardware soon." | | Amazing | hejcloud wrote: | Recently, I've been thinking about using Asahi as the host system | running on my M1 MBA and run everything macOS in a vm. Does | anyone have experience with that? How stupid would that be? | zamadatix wrote: | People have gotten QEMU with KVM running VMs and other people | have gotten macOS ARM64 running under QEMU... so I think | technically possible, though I haven't actually tried going | that far with it. I don't think you'd get virtual GPU | acceleration support working in the current state, so | performance would be pretty god awful. | tiffanyh wrote: | Donate. | | Please don't forget to donate if you get value from Asahi. | | This is tremendously detailed and laborious work that people are | doing in their free time. | | https://asahilinux.org/support/ | [deleted] | baq wrote: | Related: does anyone do development on a Mac in a Linux VM? If my | dockers are already running in a VM, why not go to the next | logical step? | _ph_ wrote: | I do all of my development work on my x86-Mac in a VMWare VM. | Works very well. I am using Fedora. | hedora wrote: | I'm using a multipass docker setup. It is faster than my | previous setup, but when running make -j from inside the | container top says that only 1 of 8 CPUs is getting scheduled | to userspace at a time. | | Also, the bind mount of the external MacOS directory is | extremely slow. I do out of tree builds so that the builds land | in ext4. | | I haven't gone the next logical step because (1) it is plenty | fast for rust development, and battery life is fine, and (2) | I'd like webcam and speaker support. | | Also, I just checked, and I have a 2023 model, and the | installer status is "WIP", so I guess I'll be waiting a bit | longer. | umanwizard wrote: | I used to do this before switching to a Linux laptop. It worked | mostly fine. | e12e wrote: | Filesystem/disk performance? Although that's probably an | argument against running Docker on arm64 Macs too... | ParetoOptimal wrote: | Docker desktop has arm64 builds. | jzombie wrote: | I use Parallels w/ an Xubuntu VM running some Docker projects | and am pleased with the results. | | Filesystem performance used to be better than Docker Desktop, | but they seem about on par w/ one another now. | ParetoOptimal wrote: | > Filesystem performance used to be better than Docker | Desktop, but they seem about on par w/ one another now. | | They made an update that claims performance is comparable. | | I tested realistic workloads last week and docker desktop was | still meaningfully worse. | | If your work computer has antivirus, the performance of | docker desktop will be even worse if exceptions aren't or | can't be added. | l72 wrote: | My work issued laptop is a Macbook Pro M1. | | I typically work on my work issued linux workstation (pretty | old now and less powerful than my Macbook Pro), but often need | to do development from my laptop too. I run a Fedora arm VM in | UTM full screen. It generally works well, although I'd much | prefer to have native linux on my laptop. It would be nice of | mac os didn't interrupt full screen mode randomly and allowed | UTM to capture all keys and touchpad gestures. | | I personally am incredibly unproductive on a mac, and have no | idea how anyone does anything with how terrible the window | management and virtual desktops are. Plus, I find all my linux | based tools that I am accustomed to just work so much better | under linux. So for me, even a VM is still a huge leap in | productivity. | viraptor wrote: | Utm is there if you want reasonable size desktop without | fighting with qemu settings / setup. https://mac.getutm.app/ | ParetoOptimal wrote: | I tried utm early on with an m1 but had many graphics issues | that parallels made work out of the box. | | I need to try it again, bet it works out of box now. | mixmastamyk wrote: | How much do you need macos around to use it? | | Sounds like the original install and then for firmware updates? | I'd like to keep telemetry to a minimum and not use macos if | possible. | vulcan01 wrote: | Yes, that's right; I generally pop back in to macOS every so | often to check for OS updates (which update the firmware as | well - no way to just update the firmware). | mixmastamyk wrote: | I seem to remember there being a tiny recovery partition or | cut-down version of macos or something maybe from boot CD (we | have an old iMac). | | Also found this: | | https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/311947/how-to- | upda... | | Still I'd rather have no MacOS. | brundolf wrote: | Is the desktop GPU-rendered by this point? What's battery life | like (for those using Asahi daily)? | | Thinking about taking the dive... | Aeolos wrote: | It is GPU accelerated and very smooth since late last year. | Battery life is about 6-8 hours on an M1 air for me, and should | improve significantly with this latest upgrade (haven't | measured yet). | | The installation experience is very smooth, so it's very easy | to try it out. You can nuke it afterwards if it doesn't work | for you. | tiffanyh wrote: | It appears so. | | From last December: | | > "This release features work-in-progress OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL | ES 2.0 support for all current Apple M-series systems. That's | enough for _hardware acceleration with desktop environments_ , | like GNOME and KDE." | | https://asahilinux.org/2022/12/gpu-drivers-now-in-asahi-linu... | Jasper_ wrote: | Sample-rate shading is exceptionally rare (MSAA is rare-ish these | days, but I only know of exactly one title that has shipped | sample-rate shading), so requiring a basic compiler transform to | handle it, especially when they can do so easily because of their | tiler architecture, is pretty sane. | samwillis wrote: | The work of the Asahi team is incredible, and so much fun to | watch unfold. | | I wander if now that you can get a _rack mount_ Mac Pro with | Apple Silicon (launched yesterday, the second coming of XServe), | running server workloads on them with Asahi Linux becomes a | viable route for some people? | umanwizard wrote: | FYI it's silicon, not silicone. Silicone is a type of rubber. | samwillis wrote: | The curse of Dyslexia and crap Apple spell check. | thx-2718 wrote: | This is what they have support for at the moment: | | https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support#m2-d... | | Maybe not quite possible to do today but if Asahi keeps up the | pace they've made so far I bet it will be soon. | | It helps that Apple has popular hardware so there's a good bit | of people out there interested in developing support for Apple | processors. | smoldesu wrote: | If you're doing on-the-road visuals and you want a chunky | realtime rackmount to render with, $7k for an M2 Ultra might | look like a steal. For hosting purposes and parallel | workloads though, there are _many_ other options at much | better price /performance points in the same market. If | you're not leveraging Apple software and you pay for an Apple | Silicon server, you're kinda wasting money that could have | gone towards an Ampere or Grace instance instead. | kytazo wrote: | Its been more than a year I'm running asahi on my macbook air and | I can't stress how grateful I feel for enjoying such wonderful | freedom. | | I don't feel like ever going back to x86 to be honest, at this | point there is nothing lacking or unable to run and when the | neural engine drivers come online now that the GPU is starting to | mature people will be able to juice out every last bit of | computation this machine is capable of. | | For the record, I've switched to the edge branch a couple of | months ago and honestly I noticed no actual difference in my day- | to-day tasks which is really telling about how powerful even the | M1 is when it can handle software rendering in such an effortless | manner coupled with anything else running. | | Really thank god for asahi being a thing. | smoldesu wrote: | > when the neural engine drivers come online now | | Has there been any ongoing work on this? It's been marked as | "WIP" in GitHub for a while now, and I'd imagine it's one of | the more complicated things to reverse-engineer. | dougall wrote: | Some: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35301630 | kytazo wrote: | You can check here for some insight | | https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/asahi/search?q=ane | https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/asahi/search?q=neural | https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/asahi-dev/search?q=ane | est31 wrote: | The features support page lists the webcam as TBA. How do you | do video conferencing? USB webcam? No video? | mschuster91 wrote: | People who demand others show their faces in a video call | generally aren't fun to be around anyway, and if it's family | or friends just use your phone. | imiric wrote: | > at this point there is nothing lacking or unable to run | | Sure there is. You just haven't run into it yourself. | | Faster, cooler and more power efficient hardware is great. I | just don't think that it makes up for depending on a small team | of volunteers to resolve all hardware issues in an ecosystem | hostile to OSS, which might break at any point Apple decides to | do so. | | And the incompatibilities with ARM are not negligible. If all | your software runs on it, great. If not, good luck depending on | yet another translation layer. | | I'm sticking with my slow, hot and power-hungry x86 machines | with worse build quality for the foreseeable future. The new | AMD mobile chips are certainly in the ballpark of what Apple | silicon can do, so I won't be missing much. | psanford wrote: | > depending on a small team of volunteers to resolve all | hardware issues in an ecosystem hostile to OSS, which might | break at any point Apple decides to do so | | You are describing how most OSS software has been developed. | I don't see how this is any different than early linux when | no hardware manufacturers had any interest in supporting it. | | A lot of the work that the asahi team is doing is just fixing | Arm issues in the linux kernel (and sadly user space). That | work will benefit everyone using Arm systems, not just folks | running asahi on Apple hardware. | | Its good for there to be more hardware architecture | competition! I'm glad I can run my server workloads on the | Arm servers in AWS that are 20% cheaper than the equivalent | x86 machines. I'm glad that I can run the software I like | (linux) on legitimately nice hardware (m2 air). You can make | different decisions on what architectures are best suited for | your needs, but the competition in the market improves the | options and prices for everyone. | | I've been using Asahi since the fall of 2022. When I first | started using it a lot of software was broken because of bugs | in that software that had never been exposed before | (specifically around page sizes larger than 4k). All of that | software has now been fixed. Support for linux/arm will only | continue to improve as more people use it. | imiric wrote: | > I don't see how this is any different than early linux | when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in | supporting it. | | It's very different. Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were | incentivized to support Linux to expand their customer | base. A trillion-dollar corporation has no incentive to | sell their hardware to a niche of a niche of technical | users who are not part of their software ecosystem. | | Another major difference is that Asahi is a small team of | dedicated volunteers who want to run Linux on their Macs. | They're a niche intersection of Linux hackers and Apple | fans. Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much | larger customer base and group of hackers willing to spend | time adding supporting for it. | | Even worse: Apple can decide at any point to make their | hardware much more difficult to support. Newer models or | firmware updates might break things. Being at the whims of | a corporation that is the antithesis of F/LOSS to run Linux | on their hardware doesn't inspire confidence. | | > Its good for there to be more hardware architecture | competition! | | > Support for linux/arm will only continue to improve as | more people use it. | | Agreed. I'm glad that Asahi exists. But we've had ARM Linux | distros for decades now. What Asahi is doing is | specifically to support Apple hardware. Some improvements | will trickle out to improve general ARM support, but this | points out the gargantuan task they're actually up against. | Not only do they need to reverse engineer the hardware, | they have to resolve all software issues with Linux and | ARM. My hat's off to them. The willpower, patience and | skills required to wade through the absolute mountain of | issues must be astronomical. Yet this is also part of my | concern; how long can a developer keep the motivation and | sanity to swim against the current? | | It's great that Asahi works for you and everyone else. I'm | just pointing out why it will likely never be my choice for | any serious work. | psanford wrote: | > Hardware manufacturers in the 90s were incentivized to | support Linux to expand their customer base. | | That is not an accurate description of linux support by | hardware manufactures from that time period. | | > Unsupported hardware in the 90s typically had a much | larger customer base and group of hackers willing to | spend time adding supporting for it. | | I also don't think this is generally correct. Have you | looked at all the random drivers in the linux kernel for | niche hardware. A ton of that is from one or two | hobbyists taking the time to add support. | | > Apple can decide at any point to make their hardware | much more difficult to support. Newer models or firmware | updates might break things. Being at the whims of a | corporation that is the antithesis of F/LOSS to run Linux | on their hardware doesn't inspire confidence. | | I guess, but so what? Apple can't break the hardware they | are already shipping if you are just running linux on it. | Its true, I might not buy a theoretical future laptop | from Apple if I can't run linux on it, but I don't see | how that would affect my purchasing decision for hardware | that is currently available. | | > The willpower, patience and skills required to wade | through the absolute mountain of issues must be | astronomical. Yet this is also part of my concern; how | long can a developer keep the motivation and sanity to | swim against the current? | | Hmm, maybe you've not worked on projects like this, or | are motivated by different things. To me, reverse | engineering a thing to figure out how it works and then | writing software to get it to do things the original | designers hadn't planned for is one of the more | satisfying and fun activities of being a software | engineer. I suspect the asahi team is having fun doing a | lot of this work. (That's not to say its all fun. It | sounds like getting things upstreamed has been trying. I | also think having to read giant comment threads where | people are needlessly negative about their work might be | a bit demoralizing.) | | > It's great that Asahi works for you and everyone else. | I'm just pointing out why it will likely never be my | choice for any serious work. | | You should obviously run whatever works for you. | imiric wrote: | > Have you looked at all the random drivers in the linux | kernel for niche hardware. A ton of that is from one or | two hobbyists taking the time to add support. | | Sure, for _niche_ hardware. When was the last time a GPU | driver was added by reverse engineering it? The single | Nouveau maintainer was burnt out, last I heard, and the | project was never a serious alternative to NVIDIA's | closed driver. Kudos to whoever found the energy to | contribute to it, but these projects usually don't have a | bright future. | | Now expand that to include maintaining all Apple devices, | and it's an insane amount of effort realistically | unsustainable for any group of volunteers. But good luck | to the Asahi team. | mfuzzey wrote: | >When was the last time a GPU driver was added by reverse | engineering it | | Freedreno (for the Adreno family) Etnaviv (for the | Vivante family) Panfrost / Bifrost (for Mali) | | All these RE efforts built on each other, although the | GPUs are different the tools built to do the RE were | shared (and I think ashai is benefiting too). | | AFAIK Google has now hired Rob Clark the Freedreno | maintainer who started all this to work on Freedreno for | Android / ChromeOS | | Upstream Linux now has pretty good GPU support for all | the major mobile GPUs these days. The hold out has been | PowerVR but they are now working on an official (not | reverse engineered) driver. | kelnos wrote: | > _Nouveau maintainer was burnt out, last I heard, and | the project was never a serious alternative to NVIDIA 's | closed driver_ | | Simply not true. I recall in the mid '10s using it | because the proprietary driver was crashy garbage. No, I | didn't get the same performance possible with the | proprietary driver, and I didn't have a bleeding-edge | video card, but it was more than usable as a daily | driver. | psanford wrote: | Nvidia/Nouveau is a good example. I've had a number of | laptops with nvidia graphics. For most of that time | Nouveau was _more stable_ than the official nvidia | drivers. Linux clearly was a second class citizen for | nvidia for most of the last 20 years. Maybe go back and | rewatch linus' rant about nvidia if you need a reminder | about how terrible they have been historically. | | Nvidia now only sort of cares about linux because of | gpgpu applications. They still clearly don't care about | gaming on linux; or desktop stability. | | Yes, I will take Nouveau over the official drivers | whenever I can. | imiric wrote: | See, now I just think you're gaslighting me. | | Nouveau has never been more stable, or nearly as | performant as official NVIDIA drivers. I've had the exact | opposite experience from you on every laptop I've had | since Nouveau was released, so we must live in different | universes. | | > Linux clearly was a second class citizen for nvidia | | And Linux is not even on the radar for Apple. :) | | Anyway, I think we've exhausted our arguments here, and | are just talking past each other now. Have a good day. | smoldesu wrote: | It's not gaslighting: | https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/PowerManagement.html | | Nouveau is an awesome project, but for later cards it's | basically a dead project. You _can_ get some features to | work, but without proper power management there 's no | justifiable reason to daily-drive it. The proprietary | driver is by no means perfect (particularly for Wayland) | but it's the only real option if you own a modern card. | | > And Linux is not even on the radar for Apple. :) | | They must be awfully curious about why Xserve failed, | then. | psanford wrote: | If you've had good experiences with the nvidia drivers, | thats great. My experiences with them have been bad and I | will use Nouveau for general desktop environments unless | I'm also doing gpgpu. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Point me to the Apple contributed drivers in the kernel | please. | throwaway894345 wrote: | The parent already addressed the point that you're trying | to make when he said: | | > I don't see how this is any different than early linux | when no hardware manufacturers had any interest in | supporting it. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | This is not early Linux anymore. | psanford wrote: | Why does Apple need to contribute to this work to make it | somehow legitimate or good? I own some nice hardware (an | m2-air), I want to run Linux on it. Asahi allows me to do | that! Why can we not celebrate that the asahi team is | bringing oss to new hardware? | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | They don't need to. I keep seeing that Apple does no less | than other companies w/ regard to Linux. Well- where are | their kernel contributions then? Lenovo and Dell (my two | laptop manufacturers) contribute. | | https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/li | nux... | imiric wrote: | They also don't need to contribute to the Linux kernel. | Why would they? They don't support Linux on their | hardware in any official capacity, otherwise projects | like Asahi wouldn't need to exist. | | And playing devil's advocate, Apple has open sourced | their macOS and iOS kernels, and has some open source | presence[1]. None of their contributions are crucial | parts of their business, of course. | | [1]: https://opensource.apple.com/ | psanford wrote: | > I keep seeing that Apple does no less than other | companies w/ regard to Linux. | | Where did I make that claim in this thread? | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | > in an ecosystem hostile to OSS | | > You are describing how most OSS software has been | developed. | | Nope. Disagree here | psanford wrote: | Cool, thats a different claim than what you said above | but at least one I can actually engage with. | | I've run linux on many Dell and Lenovo systems over the | last 25 years. Most of those systems were fully | unsupported by the manufactures for anything but windows. | And yet, random people on the internet contributed to | make that hardware (mostly) work. I've not seen any | particular improvement in the driver situation since Dell | started selling linux certified systems. | | Its not really surprising though, Dell is just an | integrator. All they do for their systems with linux pre- | installed is to pick hardware that already has drivers. | They took a little bit of work out of needing to research | if a given configuration is likely to work or not with | linux (which is good). They don't really deserve much | credit beyond that. | | Its also a little funny because most drivers from | hardware manufacturers suck. I don't know why, but most | hardware companies are terrible at writing software. Its | easy to list off hardware companies that have a long | history of shipping mediocre, buggy linux drivers: | nvidia, amd, broadcom, realtek, (maybe i should just list | every nic and wireless chipset manufacturer). Some of | these companies have gotten better and have learned how | to be good kernel contributors, but they were mostly bad | for years and years. Thankfully in some of those cases | random people on the internet reverse engineered the | hardware and contributed from scratch drivers to the | kernel. Most of the time I've been happier with the | experience of running those from scratch drivers than | what hardware manufactures ship. | mfuzzey wrote: | Absolutely. A large part of the reason is that in the OSS | world the architecture is optimised to make as much as | possible common between drivers for different hardware. | | For example for GPU drivers Mesa has tons of common code | (NIR, GLSL parser etc) that is shared by all drivers with | just the hardware specific parts being per driver whereas | closed source vendor drivers reinvent the wheel each | time. | | Similarly for kernel wifi drivers there is a single | MAC802.11 stack shared by all drivers. | | Vendor drivers have an initial head start since those | writing them have access to internal documents describing | the hardware interface and don't have to do reverse | engineering. But, over time, OSS drivers can be better as | improvements to common code help _all_ drivers. | | In fact I think the best way hardware vendors could help | OSS is not to provide drivers but documentation. | mfuzzey wrote: | >A lot of the work that the asahi team is doing is just | fixing Arm issues in the linux kernel (and sadly user | space) | | While I don't have Apple hardware so haven't been closely | following Asahi I dont't think that is true. Linux has | supported Arm for years (more like decades) now. They've | been doing excellent work on support for Apple specific | hardware sure, generic Arm not so much since it was mostly | done. | stirlo wrote: | If you follow Hector Martin the lead Asahi dev he's | encountered a number of bugs and race conditions in ARM | linux systems which were never previously exposed because | there weren't blazing fast ARM chips out there that could | trigger them. | psanford wrote: | Let me be more specific. There were a lot of bugs | specifically related to non-4k page size architectures. | Arm doesn't dictate the page size so most of the Arm | systems out there have defaulted to 4k pages. The Asahi | wiki has a partial list of userspace programs that were | (or still are) buggy and broken because they made | simplifying assumptions about how different architectures | work[0]. | | Maintainers of other non-x86 architecture have said that | this is improving things for them[1]. | | [0]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Broken- | Software [1]: https://www.talospace.com/2022/03/asahi- | linux-gives-hope-for... | throwaway894345 wrote: | Aren't lots of things in Linux dependent on a small team of | volunteers? I know the Linux foundation owns the whole | kernel, but in practice how many full time people work on the | ext4 driver or whathaveyou? | fallat wrote: | > I just don't think that it makes up for depending on a | small team of volunteers to resolve all hardware issues in an | ecosystem hostile to OSS | | This. The volunteer pool is too small. And you're supporting | a shitty company. | simonh wrote: | I hope you're being good. Every time a Samsung Galaxy owner | says this, a fairy dies. | throwaway894345 wrote: | I would like to see the volunteer pool grow, but I suspect | a lot of things in the Linux kernel are maintained by a | small pool of volunteers--it's not like all volunteers (or | paid developers) work across the whole kernel, after all. | | Also, which are the virtuous hardware companies and what's | stopping them from making compelling products? And since | I'm already a Mac user, I've already supported this evil | company, so what does it matter if I change out the | operating system? | fallat wrote: | Not sure why you're fixated on the whole Linux kernel - | we're talking about a small pool of volunteers supporting | complex modules. | | There are good laptops out there other than Macs... | Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc all have offerings which are | supported _out of the box_ by Linux because they aren 't | using their own hardware or do contribute the necessary | code to run FOSS OSs. | | I'm not asking you to now dump your Mac. That'd be silly. | Continue to use your Mac with Asahi, just don't complain | if Apple decides to break anything at any time, and | expect it. Know that what you type on now is already | planned for obsolescence and most likely has intentional | design flaws as shown again and again by people like | Louis Rossmann. | | When your Mac dies, I _am_ asking you to not buy Apple | for your next laptop. That 's all that can be reasonably | asked. | hedora wrote: | > _There are good laptops out there other than Macs... | Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc all have offerings which are | supported out of the box by Linux because they aren 't | using their own hardware or do contribute the necessary | code to run FOSS OSs._ | | For the love of all that is holy, name one model that has | the following properties: | | - 6 hours real life battery doing C++ development work. | | - 7+ days suspend battery life | | - 99.99% success rate resuming from suspend under linux | (~ 1 kernel panic per year is OK) | | - Centered keyboard and trackpad | | - >> 1080p screen | | - bluetooth, wifi, webcam, etc, etc, all work reliably (~ | 1 device "need to reboot" failure across all categories, | per year) | | - un-noticable fan | | - less than 10% permanent hardware failure rate per year | | None of the last ~ $10K worth of intel machines I've used | (including high end macs, linux and windows machines) met | the above criteria. | | My M2 macbook actually ticks all the boxes. | | However, I really, really, dislike MacOS. | fallat wrote: | My thinkpad does all those things... I expected really | something crazier as a rebuttal. It sounds like you may | have bought bad products and then bought a Mac when they | had those specs and were happy then... | kitsunesoba wrote: | I wish more manufacturers worked harder to keep fan noise | down to between none and barely audible without severely | throttling the CPU and GPU or toasting your lap. My | laptop shouldn't be spinning up its fan just because I | plugged in something as pedestrian as a 2560x1440 60hz | monitor (as my ThinkPad X1 Nano likes to). | dmitrygr wrote: | Installing "uBar" fixed a lot of my beef with MacOS. (I | get no referral bonus, just a happy user) | ced wrote: | To be clear, is this a description of your experience | with Asahi Linux? | endorphine wrote: | > _I 'm sticking with my slow, hot and power-hungry x86 | machines with worse build quality for the foreseeable | future._ | | Nothing wrong with being a late adopter. Nothing wrong with | being an early adopter either. | acomjean wrote: | I have an AMD Linux laptop I've been using for work. | | It's great. The battery life is great, it's quite fast with a | lot of cores, when I need to do my genetics runs (plugged | in). Build quality isn't bad, plus affordable and lots of | ports. After my initial transition away, not missing my 2015 | Mac book pro. | | Linux is the way to go. I don't blame people with apple | hardware for wanting it. I just don't feel the x86 side is as | bad as the everyone makes it out to be. We've come along way | since my first Linux laptop and it's not so great battery | life. | danieldk wrote: | Two years ago or so I bought a ThinkPad with an AMD Ryzen | CPU, there was a lot of hype about them. How Linux laptops | were finally competitive, speed, driver, and battery-wise. | | The machine was quite a bit slower than an M1 Air, would | have loud fans during video meetings, and on Linux the | battery would typically last 3 hours (6-7 on Windows, yes I | did all the usual power optimizations). In S3 sleep it | would discharge overnight and the next day it would refuse | to charge with Lenovo's included USB-C adapter. When waking | up the machine from sleep the track point or trackpad | wouldn't come up 1/3rd of the time on Linux. | | I used the laptop for work and the question 'does the | laptop work' when having a meeting or having to teach | became so stressful, that one day after another Linux | hardware episode I immediately went to a store after work | and picked up an M1 Air and never looked back (well, got an | M1 Max after that). | | There is no way I am going to touch Linux on laptops within | 5 years. | | (I use a headless Linux GPU machine daily, first used Linux | in 1994, and was paid to work on a Linux distribution in | the past.) | imiric wrote: | > Two years ago or so I bought a ThinkPad with an AMD | Ryzen CPU | | Things have changed a bit since then[1]. The new Phoenix | chips are quite competitive with the M2 as far as | performance and TDP goes. Your other complaints are with | Lenovo, not AMD. | | I doubt anyone will argue that Apple laptops don't have | the best build quality. Apple has the advantage of full | vertical integration, so it's very difficult for any | other manufacturer to compete on things like battery life | and power efficiency. | | The Linux glitches you describe is the usual Linux jank. | I don't disagree that even the most well-supported Linux | laptop will have these. As a Linux user, you choose to | deal with these issues because the alternative of relying | on a corporation to decide how you're going to use your | computer is not an option. I've also heard and | experienced my share of issues with macOS and Windows. In | the eternal words of a modern philosopher: every OS | sucks[2]. | | [1]: https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m2-max- | vs-amd-ry... | | [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI | kelnos wrote: | Was the laptop advertised as supporting Linux, or, if | not, did you at least do your research ahead of time to | ensure that everything worked properly? Because clearly | it didn't, so I expect Linux support was already known to | not be in a great place before you bought it. | | And yes, that sucks. We should have first-class support. | It's no wonder macOS gained popularity among developers. | But I've been running Linux on laptops for 15+ years now | (even on Macs), and I've seen how it's changed from | barely-working and having to futz with things at every | kernel upgrade, to pretty much seamless (and these days I | really have little patience for futzing around with | things; I want something that works so I can do useful | things on it). But, again: you need to choose your | hardware carefully. | | For reference, I had a 2016-model Razer Blade Stealth, | which had no issues with Linux. Then in early 2019 I | bought a 2018-model Dell XPS 13 that worked flawlessly | (except for the fingerprint reader, which I knew ahead of | time and accepted as ok). For the past yearish I've been | using a Framework Laptop, which has had some problems | (unrelated to Linux; Windows users have the same | problems), but the hardware support on Linux has been | solid. | | Meanwhile, I'd constantly hear problems from my friends | with Macs about how it could never stay connected to a | wireless network after a couple hours (requiring a reboot | to fix), or would frequently "beachball" under not that | much load, or how the yearly major OS update would | usually break their development setup. I used macOS on | and off between 2005 and 2017 or so, and ran into plenty | of issues as well. | | While I certainly agree there's some laptop hardware that | you just shouldn't run Linux on, the still-kicking Steve | Jobs Reality Distortion Field somehow causes people to | ignore or explain away all the issues macOS has. | acomjean wrote: | Sorry it didn't work for you. I would recommend anyone | buying at notebook to get one with linux pre-installed. I | did that because I want to use this thing, not futz with | it. | | I'm assuming you're using Asahi Linux on your Macs | (though you said you wouldn't touch it..). The lack of | hardware diversity should make comparability easier, even | if everything need to be reversed engineered. | | I get 6 hours or so on my machine. Its pretty much | silent, unless I push it. Its a Ryzen 7 5700u. We do a | lot of parallel compute and genetics code tends massively | parallel and x86 optimized. Mostly run on cluster though. | I haven't done any maintenance and have had not hardware | issues. | | I don't link I could ever go back to macos, or windows. | hedora wrote: | What ryzen laptop is this that you keep referencing? | | The negative experiences with the thinkpad are typical of | all the intel laptops I have recently used, preloaded OS | (including Windows, and to a lesser extent, Linux and | MacOS), or not. | | Whenever I look for an AMD laptop, it has a low | resolution (1080p) display, and/or an off-center | keyboard/trackpad (or has some other obvious fatal flaw). | | I'm typing this on an M2 macbook. I do 100% of my work in | an "8 core" arm Linux VM that can only use one core for | userspace stuff (according to top), but that still kicks | the pants off my previous laptop. | | I'm strongly considering dual booting into asahi. | kitsunesoba wrote: | The off-center keyboard thing is super irritating. I know | some live and die by numpads but for my usage, 99% of the | time they're just collecting dust and making typing less | comfortable. | | Laptop displays are also a common frustration, though | this has been improving lately. Still too many models | stuck on 16:9 aspect ratio though, which is suboptimal | for anything but watching movies due to lack of vertical | real estate. By the time you've factored in all the | taskbars, titlebars, toolbars, menubars, tab bars, and | status bars you've got a keyhole left to peer through. | This is less of a problem for those using something like | i3 or Sway where half of those bars are hidden but tiling | WMs just aren't my thing. | acomjean wrote: | Its a system76 pangolin (2022) | | >Whenever I look for an AMD laptop, it has a low | resolution (1080p) display, and/or an off-center | keyboard/trackpad (or has some other obvious fatal flaw). | | yup it has both of those. But the screen is only15", and | I'm old so it doesn't matter. It not glossy which I | really like though. | | If you love the mac hardware, give Asahi a try. My | understanding its the best linux for the M-series | macbooks. Linux is great for developing on and they seem | to be making great progress. | kytazo wrote: | > And the incompatibilities with ARM are not negligible. | | Namely? | mo_42 wrote: | I'm running it on my M1 MBP. Also super happy. How do you use | suspend? | | That's the only thing I'm really missing currently. | lucabs wrote: | [dead] | JCWasmx86 wrote: | Would you say buying e.g. a Mac mini for 2.3kEUR just to run | Asahi Linux is worth it? | jb1991 wrote: | I've owned both windows and Apple computers, quite many of | them, over the last 20 years. On average, the Apple machines | last at least twice as long as the windows machines while | still being fully usable. One could argue just based on that | basic math that they are worth twice the price. | 12345hn6789 wrote: | If you take care of your devices they will last. - typed | out on a gen 1 i7 desktop | jabbany wrote: | Unfortunately, Apple machines are usually 4 - 10 times more | expensive, making this choice still quite difficult. | mattkevan wrote: | You mean it's possible to buy the exact equivalent of a | M1 MacBook Air for PS99-PS249? | | Send me the link, that sounds amazing. | Apfel wrote: | Yeah, the M1 MBA was really so out of the norm in terms | of value that it's pretty much impossible to find | anything like it at the price point. It literally turned | me into an Apple person, essentially overnight. I no | longer even switch on my windows machines. | jabbany wrote: | Not sure where you got the impression of that? | | There do not exist "equivalent"s to any Apple devices (I | don't see them licensing the M1/2 chips to anyone else | anytime soon). But depending on what you care about, a | "comparable" Apple device could be 10x more expensive. Of | course, for other tasks a "comparable" Apple device can | also be _cheaper_ than any non-Apple device available! | | Only looking at aiming for similar "longevity" (since the | parent is using that as a benchmark), there are plenty of | devices that have a useful life comparable to Apple | devices at 1/4 - 1/10 the price. | tverbeure wrote: | I'd love to see your 10x example. | jabbany wrote: | There is one above in the server/homelab space. Items | like memory and storage are charged huge markups* so if | you need a lot of capacity of those you are going to | quickly get into the 10x range! | | As for longevity, if you consider software support ending | as EoL, software/OS support for a huge swath of Intel | iMacs (especially those with DGPUs) was dropped by Apple | quite a few OS releases ago and you have to run community | patches to keep them working. Whereas similar decade old | hardware still run Win 10 and Linux out of the box. | | *: Don't get me wrong though, the markups are for good | reason. x86 platforms don't offer anything close to | Apple's ARM chip memory bandwidth (which are closer to | DGPU levels). Similarly, for flash/SSDs. | jb1991 wrote: | They are expensive but 10X certainly seems like a | stretch. Show me comparably specd hardware only 10% the | price of an Apple machine? | jabbany wrote: | See, here's where the undefined nature of things comes | in. "Comparably spec'd" needs to be conditioned on what | task you're aiming for. | | A "pure gold hammer" is a terrible idea and would also be | terribly expensive. But asking for a "comparably spec'd" | hammer presumes the absurd premise that the material of | the hammer must be kept consistent regardless of its | intended use just for the purpose of being comparable. | | To preface, I totally understand the value proposition of | Apple devices for some use cases, but it is important to | recognize that they are aiming for certain workloads. | | As examples: | | I have one friend that runs virtualization workloads that | require a lot of memory, a lot of storage, a lot of | cores, but they don't really care about memory bandwidth, | "having a display", or even the noise of the device. An | older server with 192G of RAM, 24 cores and >8TB of | storage can easily be had and upgraded within $1k, | whereas a "comparable" Mac Pro costs upwards of $10k! (Of | course nobody would use a Mac Pro for this workload, so | the comparison is moot) | | I also have friends that are digital artists. They care | about having a high brightness and color accuracy display | but otherwise don't do anything that taxes the computer. | They also appreciate having high quality speakers and | long battery life. Some of them run M1 Macbook Airs at | the lowest 8G memory configuration for ~$800 (discounted | new from other retailers) + a digitizer for ~$100, while | the closest comparable non-Apple laptops are all premium | devices upwards of $1.5k and even then they are still | worse in the battery department! | | As for myself, I do light dev work, virtualization, | gaming, but also travel a lot and present at conferences. | I use a GPD Win Max 2 for a little over $1k (early | Indiegogo pricing). The closest Apple offering would be a | 14" MBP, and configured as needed (32GB/2T) would be | about $3800 and still be short a 4G modem and a couple of | extra devices like a digitizer, game controller, and | dongle for USB-A. -\\_(tsu)_/- Can't win 'em all. | wtallis wrote: | > An older server with 192G of RAM, 24 cores and >8TB of | storage can easily be had and upgraded within $1k, | | Are you referring to a _used_ server, or just buying a | minimally-equipped new server and upgrading it with | aftermarket RAM and (low-quality) SSDs? | jabbany wrote: | Used (decommissioned from equipment retirement from | companies) server, upgraded by maxing out the RAM slots | and using the cheapest available SSDs. | | This is a pretty common practice for homelab enthusiasts, | or so I hear. | Thews wrote: | A micro ryzen 5600U build with really bad quality | components can be half the price of a mac mini with equal | CPU performance. If you upgrade all of the mac specs you | can probably get a larger divide, but IMO maxed out macs | don't make much sense for most people. | jb1991 wrote: | A 2X price difference is certainly believable, but I was | responding to the suggestion of a 10X price difference. | wtallis wrote: | It's that focusing on one specific aspect of the system | and compromising on everything else that produces the | really big discrepancies. I tried to use PCPartPicker to | spec out a rough equivalent of a maxed-out Mac Pro in | terms of CPU cores, GPU performance, and RAM and SSD | capacity, but still ended up at with at most a 3.5x | disparity, and that's ignoring the GPU VRAM capacity | limitation and features like Thunderbolt and 10GbE and | assembly and warranty and support. If you want to assign | $0 value to a large portion of a Mac's features then you | can make it look wildly overpriced, but that's mostly an | admission that it's the wrong product for your needs. | Thews wrote: | The years of the keyboard issues left a bad taste in my | mouth, but I switched to a non mac laptop for my previous | laptop and now I'm back again. The coupling of the OS and | hardware really do make for a great user experience. I | don't want to play games on my laptop, which is the only | real use case where I hear valid complaints. I just need | my dev environment and snappy research and communication. | | A valid complaint from me is linux based container | resource utilization. The only really good fix for that | IMO is if apple did something like WSL2 or FreeBSD's | linux ABI and had an efficient compatibility layer. For | now I just run dev containers on my (linux) desktop. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Compared to what? Junk? My w541 is 10 years old and I just | ordered parts from Lenovo to perform cosmetic repairs on | it. | stirlo wrote: | For EUR2300 I assume you're looking at an M2 Pro model? Note | that neither the M2 or M2 Pro Mac Mini currently have working | display outputs[1] so no you should not. Apple changed the | way the display outputs work in M2 so they're now dependant | on Thunderbolt/DP alt mode support which is not implemented | for any Apple silicon machine yet. | | On the other hand a cheap M1 Mac Mini would make a great | machine to try it out. The M1 Mac Mini is the best supported | machine currently. | | [1] https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature- | Support#m2-d... | throwaway894345 wrote: | New M2 mac minis start at $600 (8 core CPU; 8GB ram; 256GB | SSD). You can probably find similarly specced x86 PCs for a | comparable price, but this doesn't seem unreasonable. | https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini | kytazo wrote: | You can get a used M1 mini for more or less 400EUR. Get a | glimpse of whats going on in your local facebook marketplace, | most likely you'll come up with nice offers. | jhoechtl wrote: | You must be kidding right? Who on earth would sell for 400? | ac29 wrote: | Literally the first result on (US) eBay is for 419 euros | with "more than 10 available" | windowsrookie wrote: | The Mac mini M1 was on sale new for $400 at Costco a | couple weeks ago. The M2 Mac mini is $499 on the Apple | education store. | jabbany wrote: | I'm guessing that's for a model with 8G memory? | | In my experience the experience for those is quite bad, as | you're sharing that 8G across both the CPU and GPU... | | Judging from the OP's post of 2.3kEUR, they're probably | considering a maxed out version, which has a completely | different experience since you can fully take advantage of | the high memory bandwidth for hybrid tasks unlike the low- | memory models where you're sharing the limited capacity. | jacquesm wrote: | Not the OP but I got a 13" and a larger model Mac of the x86 | variety when they were still reasonably young and even though | I eventually got all of the bits and pieces to work it | usually pays off to wait until a somewhat larger distro | supports the hardware as well. That way you benefit from a | much larger crowd of testers and once they have no more | issues you should be good to go. | | Moneywise it was definitely worth it, both machines are still | working many years later and have been pretty much trouble | free after the initial bugs were ironed out. | | If I was in the market for a new laptop right now I'd wait | for a bit and then pull the trigger on the latest model with | broad support. | macNchz wrote: | I don't run Asahi on anything currently, but I do have two | desktop Linux machines, an M1 Macbook, and have previously | run Linux on an Intel Mac... I can see the argument for | laptops based on battery life/heat/build quality, but for a | desktop machine I'd need a lot of convincing to justify the | price premium and risk of compatibility issues in choosing a | Mac Mini over a SFF/USFF/Tiny desktop with fully supported | hardware. | slowmotiony wrote: | I'd say getting a macbook or a macbook air would be worth it, | but rather than spending that much on a mac mini I'd probably | get one of those new ryzen mini-PCs like from Beelink or | Minisforum. You could get something with a 7735HS 8-core | chip, terabytes of diskspace and a shitload of LPDDR5 RAM for | 500EUR and it's as small as the mac mini. | aseipp wrote: | The compute accelerator story on mainstream, non-patched Linux, | with upstream software isn't that good at the moment. You're | going to be waiting a while before you can do fun stuff like | organize layers across the Neural Engine and GPU for ML models, | something CoreML can do today. Compute using graphics APIs | exists, but it isn't really the same and loses out on many | features people practically want and are used to, and it moves | forward much more quickly than graphics APIs e.g. Nvidia just | released Heterogeneous Memory Management as stable in the open | source GPU driver for x86. The Linux accelerator ecosystem in | practice is just held together by Nvidia's effort, honestly. | | We really need something like Mesa, but for compute accelerator | APIs. I'm really hoping that IREE helps smooth out parts of the | software stack and can fill in part of this, but the pieces | aren't all put in place yet. You'll need the GPU for a | substantial amount of accelerator work regardless of Neural | Engine support. | | I disagree that there is nothing lacking on these machines with | Asahi, I still run into small nits all the time (from 16k page | sizes biting back to software missing features). But my M2 Air | is 100%, no-questions-asked usable as a daily driver and on- | the-go hacking machine, it is fast as hell and quiet, it has | nested virtualization and is the only modern ARM machine on the | market, and I love it for that. | themulticaster wrote: | Is the Neural Engine/CoreML used in "normal" desktop apps on | macOS, or is it limited to specialized ML centered apps? In | other words, where should I expect performance improvements | if there was a hypothetical Mesa for compute accelerators? | Spontaneously, I can only think of image editors like | Photoshop offering AI-based tools. | endorphine wrote: | Curious, what do you use it for? | Topfi wrote: | Thanks to the entire Asahi team, your work is truly incredible | and so far beyond my pay grade that words fail me. I honestly | recently tried and very much struggled to communicate why I was | so amazed by your project when talking with friends. | | For anyone interested into the GPU side, I can't recommend Linas | streams[1] enough. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/@AsahiLina/streams | POiNTx wrote: | How's proton support nowadays? The new M2 15-inch macbook Air | looks really appealing | kcb wrote: | No Vulkan drivers. Will need that before anyone tries to do | much with proton. | sliken wrote: | Proton is a wrapper/tweaks to wine, right? Thus x86-64 windows | games can run on x86-64 linux. Thus the steam deck and many | happy linux gamers. Apparently it's good enough to run a large | majority of steam games, I believe I remember something like | 90+% of the top 50 games on steam. | | I don't think it helps at all with running x86-64 code on arm. | rowanG077 wrote: | For running x86-64 on arm you have FEX. You can combine FEX | with wine to run standard steam games on Asahi linux. | sliken wrote: | Wow, excellent. I'm trying to justify replacing a 2015 | desktop with either a mac studio or a ryzen/zen4 desktop. | I'm not a gamer, but do occasionally fire up steam to play | something old like Xcom 2 or Majesty. | | Knowing that at least some x86-64 steam games could work is | promising, thanks. | | For me it all comes down to the extra memory bandwidth. | | A recent metal port of llama is pretty tempting and being | able to run GPU accelerated LLMs with greater than 16GB | (mid range GPUs) or 24GB (highend/RTX 4090) on the mac | studio is interesting. $3,600 (for 96GB ram) interesting, | not so sure. | circuit10 wrote: | It can run under FEX or box64 though | nightski wrote: | This is great work and I commend it. But in other threads people | are acting like Asahi Linux hardware support is 100% complete. My | fear is that if I were to go this route and purchase the hardware | I'd be seeing fraction of the performance and capability I would | in Mac OS. To be honest this blog post seems like the project has | a long ways to go, not that it is nearly completion. | | I just can't justify buying hardware from a company that is so | hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be. | GeekyBear wrote: | You don't create a new bootloader that allows users the freedom | to run an unsigned third party OS without having it degrade the | system's security if and when they boot the native OS because | you are "hostile to developers and hackers". | fsflover wrote: | My laptop can use TPM and a hardware key with my keys and | free software. Where is the degraded security? | rodgerd wrote: | You seem unfamiliar with the Alder Lake compromise. | hedora wrote: | I could trick you into adding a hardware key, then install | a tampered version of Windows with it. | | (Also, the last time I looked, TPM keys could be grabbed | with ~ $100 of hardware, but I think that's fixed by some | newer standard.) | | But, yeah, it's not a big tradeoff in practice. I think | their point was that Apple had to expend effort to enable | the use case, which isn't "hostile" toward the use case. | GeekyBear wrote: | > I could trick you into adding a hardware key, then | install a tampered version of Windows with it. | | There are other issues as well. | | For instance, on a PC the security settings are applied | per machine and not per partition, so you can't mix an | unsigned OS on one partition with full security on | another partition. | | Also: | | > On Wednesday, researchers at security firm ESET | presented a deep-dive analysis of the world's first in- | the-wild UEFI bootkit that bypasses Secure Boot on fully | updated UEFI systems running fully updated versions of | Windows 10 and 11. | | Despite Microsoft releasing new patched software, the | vulnerable signed binaries have yet to be added to the | UEFI revocation list that flags boot files that should no | longer be trusted. | | https://arstechnica.com/information- | technology/2023/03/unkil... | kaba0 wrote: | > I just can't justify buying hardware from a company that is | so hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be. | | As opposed to what company besides those tiny ones? Almost all | of them are closed-source only and drivers have been | painstakingly reversed engineered over decades. | rollcat wrote: | > I just can't justify buying hardware from a company that is | so hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be. | | I don't think it's hostile, I think they're just hands-off; | they throw the hardware over the fence and say, "if you wanna | make use of it, here's our software; if you don't like our | software, sorry no docs but you're free to write your own". | Which is exactly what's happening. | | I mean it _would_ be nice if Apple had released more | documentation, but I totally understand if they don 't want the | burden of supporting it. | thx-2718 wrote: | First, personally I don't care what hardware or software | people use, if they are happy with the tools that they using | then that's good. | | That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the | years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, | etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually | impossible to replace components because they were serial | locked. | | As far as I am aware, progress Apple as made has been in | response to public image issues or changes in consumer laws | within the EU. | | Plus Apple software is heavily indebted to Open Source | software so they very easily could be releasing drivers for | their hardware instead of relying on community to do | backwards engineering. | circuit10 wrote: | "I think at one point they were making it virtually | impossible to replace components because they were serial | locked." | | They are very much still doing that | hedora wrote: | In fairness, most instances of them doing that actually | significantly increase the cost of evil maid hardware | tampering attacks. | | If I could, I'd configure grub or whatever to serial-lock | my Linux install to my desktop hardware (and keep a | recovery key that would unlock it at another location). | circuit10 wrote: | The issue is that Apple isn't giving anyone access to the | tools to pair the parts, unless you give them all the | information in advance, buy them at possibly inflated | prices through their self repair program if they're even | available, and then have Apple remotely approve it | afterwards (and this process only really works for | individuals, 3rd party repair is more important as most | people don't have the skill) | mschuster91 wrote: | > That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over | the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, | upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it | virtually impossible to replace components because they | were serial locked. | | That came partially out of the desire to reduce the lure | for thieves and robbers. It was really bad during the first | generations that regularly had jailbreaks and ways to | bypass "Find My..." or whatever, then the first tightening | reduced resale values of stolen iPhones by a good amount | (as they were only good enough to slaughter for parts once | reported stolen), and the latest round made it even worse | for criminals. | | _Personally_ though, I 'd preferred they simply provided | "unlock codes" with a phone that could be used to remove | the association between a part's SN and the IMEI/SN of the | phone. That way, buyers of iPhone have something similar to | a certificate of authenticity. | rowanG077 wrote: | That's not true for Macs. Apple allowed and worked with MS | to allow windows to work on Intel macs. That's pretty | insane from allowing people to do what they want with their | hardware. | thx-2718 wrote: | No offense but that's not even contextually the same | thing so I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. | rowanG077 wrote: | You claim Apples Mac line of products is adversarial to | hackers. Which I dispute with the example they help | alternative OS to run on the Mac. First with Windows and | now Asahi. | kaba0 wrote: | > Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I | think at one point they were making it virtually impossible | to replace components because they were serial locked | | You can only have so many flexibility in design with modern | hardware -- they are not fitting things into 5 cm "thin" | chassics anymore. How exactly are such a thin device be | repairable? Similarly to how old car motors could be | tweaked with, you need special tools to touch anything in a | modern engine. This is not against the customers, these are | trade offs. | | But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest | lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so | is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless | emotional reaction? | | Also, what you heard about locked down components resulted | in better security, a much lower risk of theft, and a much | more clean second-hand market (where you won't be sold a | phone with a cheap chinese shittier screen for example). | thx-2718 wrote: | "But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest | lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so | is it really fair to call them out, or is it just | baseless emotional reaction?" | | Why reply that criticism of Apple must be purely an | emotional one? Kind of diminishes your argument here. | | Immediate search result for repairable phones: | | https://www.androidcentral.com/best-sustainable- | repairable-p... | | https://shop.fairphone.com/en/buy-fairphone-4 | | Here's a laptop that you can upgrade: | | https://frame.work/ | | Lifetime for Apple isn't as long as you make it out to be | when batteries need replaced and software support for | hardware ends: | | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/macos-sonoma- | drops-s... | | "Also, what you heard about locked down components | resulted in better security, a much lower risk of theft, | and a much more clean second-hand market (where you won't | be sold a phone with a cheap chinese shittier screen for | example)." | | Apple could just release stuff that didn't break so | easily too so no need to risk changing out a screen if it | ain't broke. There are plenty of ways to increase | security of the device without making it less consumer | friendly. | | Additionally since the context here is whether Apple has | been hacker friendly or not, why shouldn't you be allowed | to upgrade and change the hardware of YOUR device? As in, | you want to put in more storage or change the screen to | one that's better in some manner (maybe it's just cost) | then you ought to be able to. | | That is it should be the device owners choice whether or | not to replace their screen with one from Apple or a | cheaper one. | kaba0 wrote: | So the only option has 1/10th the hardware of an older | iphone with shittier camera than that.. for me that's not | a good deal. Framework laptops are insanely expensive for | again, worse hardware. Isn't the point of linux to run on | anything? | | Also, every device needs battery replacements, like this | is just the physics/chemistry of batteries and it has an | absolutely doable price for any apple device. | | What breaks easily on an iphone? They are quite sturdy | phones with metal casing. They wouldn't get sold after | 5-7 years of active use if they weren't sturdy. And glass | will still be breaking when it meets with big enough | force - I again don't see your point. | | > re hacker friendliness | | The RAM has different architecture on the M series, so it | can't be replaced even theoretically. Also, every moving | part is one more point of potential breaking, plus it | takes up space. This is not a rasppi, different design | goals/constraints. | | You can put in a worse screen but one will be able to see | that in the settings so they can't be scammed. | m45t3r wrote: | > Framework laptops are insanely expensive for again, | worse hardware. | | 1199 EUR is not insanely expensive, specially considering | that I can put up-to 64GB of RAM in a Framework laptop | with a reasonable amount of money, while I would need to | pay almost the price of a full Framework laptop to do the | same in a Macbook Pro [1]. This is IMO, insanely | expensive. | | And yes, I can definitely use those amount of memory | during mass rebuilds that I sometime like to do in NixOS. | I don't even try to do those same workloads in my macOS | because they start to become hugely slow once you hit the | swap. | | [1]: by the way, this get even worse considering that I | also need to upgrade from an M2 Pro to M2 Max to have the | option to do so. I just did a quote for the cheapest | Macbook Pro with 64GB of RAM, and I got a 4000EUR quote | for 512GB of storage that is laughable low for something | that expensive. At that price, I can get 2 of the most | expensive Framework AMD and I would still have sufficient | money to get another one of the older Intel ones as a | spare. | kaba0 wrote: | Mind you, the two kinds of RAM are not directly | comparable. | m45t3r wrote: | Sure, I never said so. It doesn't mean that there isn't | workloads that benefit from more RAM (even if it is | slower) or that the Apple's RAM prices are insane. | thx-2718 wrote: | Not to mention I can't find anything on them having ECC | capabilities but I could be wrong. | thx-2718 wrote: | If you like the hardware or software that you use then I | am happy for you. | | "This is not a rasppi, different design | goals/constraints." | | That we can agree on. | | Apple is a business with specific goals and so far as a | business in terms of profits they have been successful. | | All I wanted to point out was that Apple is not hacker | friendly in my opinion, and I have listed good reasons | that you don't want to accept. There's no amount of going | in circles here that will change either point of view I | fear. | | Have a blessed day! | hedora wrote: | Going with the first link. The "best" phone is not | globally available. The second "best" comes with three | years of OS updates. I stopped reading there; three years | is a much, much shorter lifespan than you get with iOS or | MacOS. | | Also, say you have one of these phones, and are in a | major city, then break it. How will you get the parts you | need to repair it? How many hours will you be without a | phone? | | With Apple phones, it's typically same day service to get | it repaired. Worst case, you can get a new phone with | your data mostly transferred, again, same day. | | The Ars article you link is pointing out that Apple is | dropping software support for laptops that are 6 years | old. That's better than pretty much any other vendor. | | As far as laptop repairs go, frame.work is probably the | best non-apple option, but they don't have a fixed policy | for how long replacement parts will be available. The | story is similar for Apple: | | https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 | | says they provide parts for up to 7 years, and battery | swaps for up to 10 (subject to part availability). I hope | frame.work will be able to do better, but I challenge you | to find any laptop company significantly better than | this. | | (Other than soldered ram and disk, I honestly don't care | about third party parts. It's not like Apple replacement | part markups are insane or there are significantly better | parts available. I've definitely never used third party | parts for other brands of laptops, even when they were | available. However, I've been repeatedly screwed over | getting other brands of laptops repaired, especially | under warranty.) | | Anyway, I get why Apple has a bad reputation for support | and repairability. There objectively bad. However, that | doesn't mean they're not simultaneously also the best | option (or close to being the best). | thx-2718 wrote: | I am sorry but you're missing the point here. | | I'm not arguing over better hardware (performance) or | price. I am arguing over hack-ability; that's it. I hope | you can understand that. | Kratacoa wrote: | > But even this way, apple devices have by far the | longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners | easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it | just baseless emotional reaction? | | I would dispute this claim, e.g. Apple settles iPhone | slowdown case for $500m[1], just the first link I found | looking for "planned obsolescence apple" on DuckDuckGo. | This is not exclusive to their iPhones as one can find | with a quick search. | | [1][https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51706635] | kaba0 wrote: | Which was about a very stupidly communicated, but | genuinely good intentioned misshap. Iphones older devices | with old batteries had cases where they no longer could | provide sufficient voltage to the phone and thus it would | reboot randomly for people. To fix the issue, they | decreased CPU frequency so that it would no longer drain | so high peak power. | | But they should have made it an option (it is one now on | these devices) instead, they might have even come out | good from it (as an android manufacturer wouldn't even | care about such an old device at the time). | smoldesu wrote: | There's a line somewhere, and I think it's different for | every person. For a lot of people, the pricing itself is just | outright hostile. 8gb of RAM in a base model Mac is not | future-proofed in an age of local AI models, and paying to | upgrade it gets expensive, fast. For others the OS is hostile | when it unceremoniously drops support for $THING they use, or | because it has the gall to show them ads. For others yet, the | hardware is hostile because it's basically a black box that | Apple withholds documenting to maintain a monopoly on fixing | them. | | Apple is one of the few companies smart enough to | deliberately do this. It is both a testament to ability to do | brilliant things, and akin to being trapped in a room with a | lion that has twice your SAT score. The "golden handcuffs", | as they say. | kytazo wrote: | Well overall if you sum up what even a basic m1 mb air | packs, be it the panel, quality peripherals and soc itself | its rather reasonable and within reach for almost anyone | contemplating of buying a new computer. When you factor in | that they were the first ones with an actual capable | desktop arm offer I'd even say its cheap. | | At least this is how I felt 2 years ago back when I bought | it and more or less even to this day. I'm wondering how is | the market as of now, two years later, and how the $1k arm | laptops coming out today compare. | kaba0 wrote: | There is literally no other laptop on the market that would | be anywhere close to an M1 air in terms of performance- | battery life combo. And it is definitely not even on the | upper end in price for that, tiny windows laptops are | ridiculously expensive! | | So, are they really expensive? | viraptor wrote: | > I'd be seeing fraction of the performance and capability | | You'd temporarily lose some hardware support (documented) while | it's being worked on. But I'm not sure why you expect losing | performance? This is running native code. Same binary will run | the same on both systems (+/- the llvm version differences). | nightski wrote: | Specifically GPU drivers, which can dramatically impact | performance. Especially if I am attempting to run any kind of | ML workload from Linux. I'm assuming it's basically a non- | starter at this point and one is forced to use Mac OS. | viraptor wrote: | Yes. I put that in the capability rather than performance | basket though. As in, you can't access the compute shaders | yet, rather than: you can and they're slower. | zamadatix wrote: | E.g. the performance you can get out of the GPU at the moment | is a subset of what you can get out of the hardware. Or as | another more generic example, until this latest release CPU | boost states weren't enabled due to lack of proper cpuidle | driver which resulted in regressed single thread performance. | | There is nothing inherent about running Linux that will | require it be slower, in some cases it will/is even faster, | but the lack of everything being fully supported does | actually impact performance right now. It has been getting | better with time. | kytazo wrote: | CPU wise at least its been on par if not better from its | first days. At least this is what the various benchmarks at | the time showed. | | Makes you wonder about how the rest of the system | components will compare when they're finished. | hedora wrote: | Has anyone tried Steam under Linux? It's quite bad under | MacOS (2016 casual games stutter, and there is no 32 bit | support). | | I know rosetta doesn't exist under Linux, but I don't see | any options to run steam / proton under rosetta either. | viraptor wrote: | > Has anyone tried Steam under Linux? | | Through FEX, yes | https://vt.social/@lina/110068264684987710 | | > I know rosetta doesn't exist under Linux | | It does these days! https://developer.apple.com/documenta | tion/virtualization/run... | rowanG077 wrote: | Even with the regressed performance it beat osx in a ton of | workloads. | Timon3 wrote: | Does the CPU run at similar frequencies between Mac OS and | Linux (since they're writing their own drivers this isn't | guaranteed)? Is the scheduling done similarly? Are there any | special hardware modes you have to activate with e.g. binary | blobs? | | There are a bunch of factors that could affect performance | even under the same OS (try underclocking your CPU or play | around with schedulers). Given the mostly non-existent | documentation from Apple I'd strongly suspect that average- | case performance will stay worse on the Linux side for a long | time. | hedora wrote: | The currently top-rated top-level HN comment goes into | those details. This release significantly improves CPU | power management, to the point where it should be similar | to MacOS. | | Some of this stuff is handled by binary blobs that get | installed/upgraded by MacOS, and are running by the time | Linux boots. | | With the previous release, power per watt and absolute | performance were already better than high-end x86 laptops, | so if your question is "is this faster and more power | efficient than my other Linux laptop?", the answer is | probably yes. | | If you're asking if it will beat MacOS's perf/watt in all | scenarios, the answer will be no for a long time. However, | it is probably already beating MacOS in many practical | scenarios. | jb1991 wrote: | There have been multiple reports of the last couple years that | Apple has been informally internally helping the Asahi Linux | team to make it run well on their hardware. Apple cannot come | out and officially support another operating system of course, | but they are aware of the interest and are helping make it | happen, in an unofficial capacity. | hollerith wrote: | >Apple cannot come out and officially support another | operating system of course | | Apple officially supported running Windows on Macs for many | years. | jb1991 wrote: | You can still do so with VMs, officially endorsed. But | Bootcamp is RIP. Asahi Linux is not a VM, so not a fair | comparison. | hollerith wrote: | I wasn't comparing. I was refuting your assertion. | | What has changed that prevents Apple from officially | endorsing another OS nowadays when it clearly was able to | do so in the past? | freedomben wrote: | > _Apple cannot come out and officially support another | operating system of course_ | | Why? | IshKebab wrote: | Yeah that's nonsense. They already have bootcamp. | zamadatix wrote: | A car with one seat seems 100% complete if your use cases only | involve you driving it alone. Asahi Linux is absolutely in that | kind of spot right now. For some people there is 0 reason to | wait, for others it's not even worth booting. If you have fear | it's not fully complete enough, I'd say trust those feelings. | At least right now. | pkulak wrote: | Yeah, I'm not gonna run out and buy a new Macbook just to wipe | it. But these M1 machines are going to be things you just have | lying around sometime soon. If my wife upgrades, for example, I | know exactly what I'm doing with her M1 Air. :D | brundolf wrote: | Asahi is designed to be dual-booted right now (in fact you | have to go off the beaten path to not do that), and it even | uses the native Apple boot UI to let you pick your OS | coldtea wrote: | > _My fear is that if I were to go this route and purchase the | hardware I 'd be seeing fraction of the performance and | capability I would in Mac OS._ | | The performance is there, it has been running stuff much faster | than the vast majority of Intel/AMD laptops for over a year. | | Regarding the capabilities not sure which one you miss. Do you | plan to use it for development, or you want some kind of | gaming/multimedia setup? | | > _To be honest this blog post seems like the project has a | long ways to go, not that it is nearly completion._ | | It's the other way around. It has been usable as a daily driver | for ages. | | > _I just can 't justify buying hardware from a company that is | so hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be._ | | Then don't? | caskstrength wrote: | > Regarding the capabilities not sure which one you miss. Do | you plan to use it for development, or you want some kind of | gaming/multimedia setup? | | > It's the other way around. It has been usable as a daily | driver for ages. | | Honest questions since I haven't been paying attention to | Asahi for some time now: | | - Does hardware accelerated video decoding work? Including in | Firefox? | | - Does sleep work properly or do I get significant battery | drain after leaving it sleeping during the night time? Also, | does it wake up from sleep reliably? Like if you open/close | the lid 100 times in a row would it crash? | | - How is wifi? Does it work as fast and reliably on Linux as | the Intel cards? Supports latest WiFi standard and 6ghz? | | This would be my most basic questions to buy MacBook as a | daily-driver Linux laptop. | nightski wrote: | I don't see why it is unreasonable to desire Apple to provide | documentation and open up their hardware. Honestly I'd ask | the same as any other hardware vendor. Intel for example | provides very detailed technical documents on their new GPUs | (A770). | coldtea wrote: | It's not unreasonable, it's just not gonna happen any time | soon. | roboben wrote: | I can't wait for M2 (pro) support for my MacBook Pro. I was long | term Thinkpad/Arch Linux user and really want to go back to such | setup. Sadly I didn't find anything better hardware-wise than the | MacBook but I love Linux. | | I know they are focused on getting it to a good quality on M1 | first but eagerly consuming all project updates! Good job team! | speed_spread wrote: | I'm still waiting for Apple Silicon that's fast enough to run | Gentoo Portage at Arch Pacman speed. | yewenjie wrote: | Is anybody daily-driving any M2 macbook pro on Asahi Linux? What | is your experience like? | zamadatix wrote: | It wasn't until this morning installing Asahi on an M2 Pro was | supported in expert only install. Prior to that it hasn't been | supported at all. There is still some work to go on the | Pro/Max/Ultra SoC family. | deelawn wrote: | I heard the Asahi Linux code is super dry. | htk wrote: | "And yes, the team is already working on Vulkan." | | This can do more for gaming on the Mac than Apple's efforts | combined. | throwaway894345 wrote: | Does anyone know how efforts are going to to get Asahi's kernel | changes merged back upstream? Has anything been merged upstream | already? Is there a roadmap for getting things upstreamed? Are | they pursuing an incremental approach to upstreaming individual | components or do they have to prove that everything is flawless | on Apple silicon before anything can be merged? | yobert wrote: | This information is on their website wiki. See | https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support | zamadatix wrote: | The feature table here | https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support also | tells you where along the path something is in terms of being | stable and making it into the kernel. If it just has a release | number like "5.19" then that means it was successfully | upstreamed as part of that kernel version. Generally, the Asahi | team tries to upstream as they go, but if they are uncertain | about the overall architecture of a driver they'll hold off to | prevent ossifying certain design decisions too early. An | example of this is the GPU driver. | Ruq wrote: | Their work tempts me to get a Mac some day just because I know I | can run Linux on it. | eikenberry wrote: | Awesome work. Now if we could just get those parts in a modern, | modular laptop with replaceable components. Frame.work has raised | the table-stakes for laptops. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-06 23:00 UTC)