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Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

asahilinux.org

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Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#141

Post by ksec »

rightisleft wrote: post #94
pkulak wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac hardware is just so damn good though. And everywhere. I absolutely agree with what you're saying... but man, Linux working well on an M1 Mac would be my ideal machine.

is it? my 2016 macbook was the worst apple product i've ever owned...

Well All 2016 - 2019 MacBook are pretty much junk. As shown by their resale value. So it was probably one of the worst Apple product ever.

But the Pre-2015 MacBook Pro and M1? They are great. ( Although M1 still have shitty keyboard )

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#142

Post by marcan_42 »

JosephRedfern wrote: post #64

> As long as no code is taken from macOS in order to build the Linux support, the end result is completely legal to distribute and for end users to use, as it would not be a derivative work of macOS. Please see our Copyright & Reverse Engineering Policy for more information. This may be a dumb question, but are any of the Open Source components of macOS [0] useful for this kind of endeavour? Specifically stuff from X…

Worth noting that that OSS release does not include M1 support (and Apple does not open source most of their drivers, just the kernel core), although it does include (partially redacted, not buildable, because Apple) support for other mobile chips using the same CPU cores. Perhaps the next OSS dump will finally have the M1 bits. But we're definitely on our own for all of the fun stuff beyond "Linux boots with a serial tty".

At least some really basic parts are useful as a hardware reference, e.g. things related to the interrupt controller, UARTs, and CPU quirks/errata workarounds. That said, their license is incompatible with the GPL, so we cannot take any code directly. I documented this explicitly in our copyright policy:

https://asahilinux.org/copyright/

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#143

Post by hrydgard »

klelatti wrote: post #118
mhh__ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it documented if there is so software developers manual for the ISA, optimisation manual for the uarch, and no documentation at all on how the subsystems like the neural accelerator works let alone how to access it. I assume you mean that Apple have it internally, but I wouldn't assume it's any good. I would also love to see someone (I haven't got and can't afford one) try and fuzz it for undocumented instruct…

There's no software developer's manual for the ISA? Arm don't release any documentation on their ISA?

The GPU ISA (yes, GPUs have ISAs) is undocumented.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#144

Post by mhh__ »

klelatti wrote: post #118
mhh__ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it documented if there is so software developers manual for the ISA, optimisation manual for the uarch, and no documentation at all on how the subsystems like the neural accelerator works let alone how to access it. I assume you mean that Apple have it internally, but I wouldn't assume it's any good. I would also love to see someone (I haven't got and can't afford one) try and fuzz it for undocumented instruct…

There's no software developer's manual for the ISA? Arm don't release any documentation on their ISA?

There are currently undocumented instructions on M1, and Apple aren't a regular Arm partner so I'm kind of classing it as it's own ISA

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#145

Post by mhh__ »

hrydgard wrote: post #143
klelatti wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no software developer's manual for the ISA? Arm don't release any documentation on their ISA?

The GPU ISA (yes, GPUs have ISAs) is undocumented.

Even Nvidia document theirs now, and the firmware details are on GitHub to some extent for the Nouveau guys.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#146

Post by ksec »

ogre_codes wrote: post #25
reikonomusha wrote: post #21

For projects like these, I don’t know why Apple doesn’t just step in and help. What have they got to lose?

I agree. At the very least, they should be a corporate sponsor for Marcan's Patreon. Ideally they should just hire him and provide him with internal resources to work on it. Even if Apple doesn't benefit from Linux running on bare metal, many of these efforts will benefit Linux running inside a VM as well.

Or they could donate anonymously, supporting its development without their official logo.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#147

Post by m463 »

ogre_codes wrote: post #29
mhh__ wrote: post #24

What are the odds Apple shit on this?

Why? If they'd intended to shut this down, they would have a locked down boot loader like on iOS. Instead they deliberately built a boot loader which supported things like this.

That can be changed in a software update. Is this likely? probably not, however I can imagine scenarios (lets say a worm gets out) where it might "make sense"

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#148

Post by DCKing »

stopFalse wrote: post #76
DCKing wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bad faith argument. The presupposition is that Apple is inherently motivated to actively lock things down, because that's what they do with the iPhone. This glosses over that Apple has no reason to actually do so, only has reasons not to do it on the Mac, and has gone on record saying they won't treat the Mac as the iPhone. It's based on the notion that Apple would be against free booting a priori for some rea…

We've seen Apple remove competition from the App Store at will. This is not theoretical.

I'm not sure how that means anything when it comes to locking down Macs. If you're trying to make a general argument "Apple is capable of doing bad things", that's of course trivially true but does not at all imply they're interested in locking down the Mac's bootloader?

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#149

Post by bgorman »

zucker42 wrote: post #104
corytheboyd wrote: post #55

I hope this and projects like it spearhead a movement of ARM laptops outside of the Apple-sphere. I wonder if System76, for example, has their eyes on being the first to market as “the Linux laptop on ARM”. Seems right up their alley. Also worth noting that I understand that System76 and Apple are not comparable companies. One is a humble operation installing a custom Linux build on rebranded hardware, and the other…

The problem is no other laptop manufacturer besides Apple has the capital and resources to build their own chip.

Definitely not true, IP blocks are available for all critical features and chip layout can be outsourced. ARM has a Cortex-X chip available for licensing for anyone that wants a high performance CPU core.

For example, HP (who also makes laptops) has custom ASICs running Linux in their printers.

Re: Asahi Linux: Linux on Apple Silicon project

#150

Post by fsflover »

machello13 wrote: post #71
fsflover wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

Sorry, that seems like a total non sequitur to me. What about that (an outage + a failure to correctly handle the outage on the clientside) suggests Apple is planning to lock down macOS like iOS, either in terms of hardware or software? Or rather, maybe you'd like to explain what you think Apple would have to gain from doing something like that?

You cannot start any non-Apple applications unless Apple explicitly allows them and keeps a list of what and when you are running. Looks totally fine...
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