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Linux on the Mac – state of the union

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Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#71

Post by rhinoceraptor »

ubernostrum wrote: post #6
toodlebunions wrote: post #5

>>> "the realization that Apple no longer caters equally to casual and professional customers as it had in the past [YouTube video]. Instead, the company appears to be following an iOS-focused, margin-driven strategy that essentially relegates professionals to a fringe group." Ouch

Except this is largely based on mythology. People seem to equate "pro user" with "software developer" (and no other roles/occupations at all), and invent a fictitious history in which the Macbook Pro was jumping up and down on stage shouting "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" Except that never happened. The perceived dev-friendliness of the Macbook Pro was a historical accident: it turns out that when you build so…

So then the pro applications are supposed to come from? And beyond that, where are their iOS applications supposed to come from?

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#72

Post by josephg »

wyclif wrote: post #40
coldtea wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said that slice of the market will go? Complainers are always amplified on the internet. Check back in 2 years.

The perception, as displayed in this thread, is that they are. Plus the overwhelming negativity from developers regarding the new MBP, as seen in numerous HN threads and other tech news stories. I don't really have any stock in whether the perception is a reality or not, so I'm willing to be persuaded. Hopefully in the next iteration the MBP will have at least 32GB RAM, and they will make a move that will please the…

> I don't really have any stock in whether the perception is a reality or not, so I'm willing to be persuaded.

Apple said it was their best laptop launch by sales volume ever. (Although that is partially due to such a long wait from their previous model.) Honestly I'm not that surprised - despite all the hate online I know 2-3 developers who bought them on or near launch day and several others who started salivating when mine arrived. The public internet opinion seems shockingly disconnected from that of everyone I've spoken to in person about it. Although, doing mostly web development more than 16 gigs just isn't important for me or my coworkers. My last laptop had 8 and it was more than fine.

Most people are much more curious about the touchbar (its a bit gimmicky), the screen (gorgeous but no touch-based scroll in browsers sucks) and the price (yowch!). I get a few comments both ways about the new charger (oh cool no more proprietary connecters!) (whaaat no magsafe? Boo!).

Oh, and being a Gen1 apple product there's all sorts of dumb stability problems - which is a much bigger problem than the ram! My touchbar has been glitching out sometimes and the whole system has hard-crashed a half a dozen times since getting it from connecting and disconnecting my 4k monitor. I'll be very disappointed if the software doesn't improve over the next few months.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#74

Post by l1k »

andrepd wrote: post #69
l1k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. As explained in the intro, folks like antirez are considering moving back to Linux and in his linked HN comment he specifically talks about trying Linux on the MacBook he's currently using to see where he's headed. The article seeks to give these folks in particular a helping hand in understanding what works and what doesn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820490 That said, the kernel developers…

> E.g. as stated in the article, the four Thunderbolt ports are interesting for HPC applications as you can build a portable compute cluster with up to five fully-meshed high-speed networked nodes. If that's not professional I don't know what is. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Are you implying a MacBook cluster is an effective HPC platform?

Let's say you're a penetration tester, you're on-site trying to break into a network, have no Internet connectivity (e.g. because you're in a shielded data center or don't want to raise suspicion) and need to crack some passwords. 5x Skylake CPU + 5x Polaris GPU would be a sufficiently beefy platform for Hashcat, and it would fit into your backpack.

Or let's say you want to quickly set up a Hadoop cluster to crunch some data.

Five machines is certainly small as HPC clusters go, and in reality you'll probably have to cap this to four machines because you need one port to attach to a power socket if you need the cluster for more than 2-3 hours. Nevertheless the 4x 40 GBit/s Thunderbolt ports offer some really interesting possibilities, and I'm not aware of any other portable machine that has this right now.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#75

Post by scotu »

l1k wrote: post #56
matt4077 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from being wrong, that narrative doesn't even make sense as an intro to this article: the criticism was directed at the new MBP hardware – so why would these super-professional uber-users buy it and then replace the OS? (Not to mention that, if I understood it correctly, Linux currently doesn't even support the keyboard, and is otherwise probably in its usual desktop mode of "WLAN, Sound, or functioning sleep –…

Author here. As explained in the intro, folks like antirez are considering moving back to Linux and in his linked HN comment he specifically talks about trying Linux on the MacBook he's currently using to see where he's headed. The article seeks to give these folks in particular a helping hand in understanding what works and what doesn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12820490 That said, the kernel developers…

maybe, but not all pros are computer science pros, e.g. photo and videographers for example are pretty pissed that the sdcard reader was removed as far as I know... but then again that's solvable, ram limits far less (3d artists might like it?)

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#76

Post by skynetv2 »

l1k wrote: post #74
andrepd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> E.g. as stated in the article, the four Thunderbolt ports are interesting for HPC applications as you can build a portable compute cluster with up to five fully-meshed high-speed networked nodes. If that's not professional I don't know what is. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? Are you implying a MacBook cluster is an effective HPC platform?

Let's say you're a penetration tester, you're on-site trying to break into a network, have no Internet connectivity (e.g. because you're in a shielded data center or don't want to raise suspicion) and need to crack some passwords. 5x Skylake CPU + 5x Polaris GPU would be a sufficiently beefy platform for Hashcat, and it would fit into your backpack. Or let's say you want to quickly set up a Hadoop cluster to crunch s…

Can you run network stack at 40 Gbps on those ports?

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#77

Post by coldtea »

gommm wrote: post #70
coldtea wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really have any stock in whether the perception is a reality or not, so I'm willing to be persuaded. Hopefully in the next iteration the MBP will have at least 32GB RAM, The people lamenting the missing option for 32GB RAM as devastating for pros, never had it in the first place, as the previous generation didn't support 32GB either (and yet, they still worked just fine). Second, the limitation to 16GB is f…

Well people who are lamenting the lack of the 32GB ram bought a 16GB ram a while ago and are looking to upgrade. Apple could have kept the previous form factor and not made the battery 20% smaller which would have allowed them to have an energy sucking 32GB option. Plus the new form factor is useless anyway, since we end up having to carry adapters which take as much space and weight as what was saved. Anyway, I've d…

>Apple could have kept the previous form factor and not made the battery 20% smaller which would have allowed them to have an energy sucking 32GB option.

More people like thinness though, than 32GB RAM (which would have been a built-to-order option that few would have clicked). Remember, Apple has those numbers too.

To quote a programmer on thinness:

"I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light. (...) I’m personally just hoping that I’m ahead of the curve in my strict requirement for “small and silent”. It’s not just laptops, btw – Intel sometimes gives me pre-release hardware, and the people inside Intel I work with have learnt that being whisper-quiet is one of my primary requirements for desktops too. I am sometimes surprised at what leaf-blowers some people seem to put up with under their desks. (...) I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel light. A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)"

Linus Torvalds, APRIL 24, 2012

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#78

Post by vetinari »

coldtea wrote: post #30
drvdevd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I have experienced that choice on Apple hardware recently (2015 mbp retina), lately Linux seems to, let's say, 95% Just Work on non-apple x86 hardware for me, WLAN, sound, and suspend/resume. [edit] and this is with any distro, perhaps with more or less setup work

> 95% Just Work on non-apple x86 hardware for me That has been the case for a decade or so now. 95% is not enough (for non-tinkerers)

That 100% support includes a research before purchase. You just cannot purchase random hardware and hope for the best.

For me, major distributions work out of the box. For example, with my T430s, everything works, including the fingerprint reader and WWAN.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#79

Post by vetinari »

dispose13432 wrote: post #21
WWLink wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't necessarily blame the "WLAN, sound, or sleep" thing on linux. I'd blame that on cheap parts manufacturers that refuse to distribute open source drivers for fear of releasing company secrets and lack of profit margins to operate on.

>I wouldn't necessarily blame the "WLAN, sound, or sleep" thing on linux. I'd blame that on cheap parts manufacturers that refuse to distribute open source drivers for fear of releasing company secrets and lack of profit margins to operate on. I don't understand why would anyone not open-source their drivers? What's NVIDIA's secret sauce? Being able to build great silicon. What's Intel's secret sauce? Being able to b…

What is the NVIDIA and AMD secret sauce?

First, read this: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666419-what-are-your-opinions-o...

So basically, most 3D applications and games are broken to a certain degree. Both NVIDIA and AMD invested quite a lot resources into making those applications run at acceptable level and not looking broken.

Now, when you figure out how to unbroke something and put it into fast path, your competitor can lift that easily into their driver. Neither of these players want that.

The good news is, that DX12/Vulkan/Metal have quite a different approach, they don't have complicated state machine and validation in the driver, making the driver simpler and these workarounds unnecessary. If everything goes well, we may see drivers for these stacks.

Re: Linux on the Mac – state of the union

#80

Post by rhodysurf »

maratc wrote: post #68
fulafel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of developers happily running Linux on Apple laptops. It's traditionally been a good choice if IT dept makes you pick between a standardized random business laptop and a Mac.

I'm not saying there aren't; in my experience, Linux on a Mac didn't go smooth at all. Connecting Retina display and 1080p monitor at the same time, specifically, was a huge pain.

That is hopefully changed now with Wayland
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