231–240 of 414 posts
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Perhaps it's because the M1 is not just a random ARM chipset. For those wondering why Apple has a market cap of $2T this may be a good reason. They have the ability to stage, time and deliver something like the M1 Mac whereas other massive corporations like Microsoft, Google, Intel, etc simply can't.
Watching Apple vs the rest of the industry when it comes to long-term strategy reminds me of Marvel vs DC in the film industry.
Apple needs to give a little here. I think it's patently ridiculous that we have to enlist the assistance of console hackers in order to have a chance at porting the most used operating system in the entire world to run on hardware that in all likelihood already happily runs it inside of Apple's labs. > In particular, we will be reverse engineering the Apple GPU architecture and developing an open source driver for i…
> This is all a noble goal, but I can't see this as being anything other than a complete and total non-starter with zero cooperation from Apple. Why? There have been several success cases of reverse engineering in the past, for all sorts of popular and fringe hardware.
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Linus Tech Tips actually just released a video a couple of hours ago where they compared the Surface Pro X SQ2 with the M1 MacBook Air. It was not pretty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhESSZIXvCA
So basically, the M1 Macbook Air is two to three times faster than the SQ2, including comparing ARM Windows on the SQ2 against ARM Windows in a VM on the M1 Air.
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> running arbitrary code on a mac will not be changing. i wonder how much of this is thanks to peoples "gnashing of teeth" about mac getting an iphone lockdown in the end its speculation, but id wager a guess apple wouldnt have a big problem locking down macos if people didnt make a big deal out of it
It's almost certainly not due to "gnashing of teeth." They've always marketed the MacBook line as a general computing device for power users. The idea that they would make it impossible for developers to use their primary computing product is ridiculous. They know how many of these things they sell to students, developers, etc. Just a note - it's often very easy to measure the validity of your ideas by considering th…
This is really cool! Does anyone know why a similar project doesn't exist currently using the open source distribution of Apple's Darwin operating system? It has always seemed strange to me that their open source BSD OS does not have an official distribution channel with a built in package manager like macports, pkg-src, gentoo prefix, etc. OpenDarwin and PureDarwin existed for awhile, but seem to have both been aban…
Darwin isn't a good OS.
I'm not a systems software engineer[0], so I'm not positive where the new drivers live for the M1 (are they in Darwin? proprietary/exclusive to macOS?), but if those drivers are available for use already (either legally through Darwin or through copying files from macOS into Darwin or something), it seems like it might make sense to look into making a Darwin distribution rather than reserve engineering the new M1 hardware in order to add some drivers and userland programs to what is essentially another Arch Linux distribution (from what I've read about Asahi thus far).
I think the Asahi project definitely makes sense if the primary goal is to run Linux on M1 macs for its robust server/enterprise capabilities, but if the goal is to just have a dual-bootable open source desktop operating system, I feel like Darwin might actually be the easier choice here.
Apple needs to give a little here. I think it's patently ridiculous that we have to enlist the assistance of console hackers in order to have a chance at porting the most used operating system in the entire world to run on hardware that in all likelihood already happily runs it inside of Apple's labs. > In particular, we will be reverse engineering the Apple GPU architecture and developing an open source driver for i…
Apple sells hardware and now services. Software seems to be a cost center. So I doubt a third party OS like Linux will ever be a priority for them in their consumer products.
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Darwin isn't a good OS.
Fair point! I guess what I'm getting at is the fact that, even though Darwin isn't great, we know that it's building and running on all production M1 macs, can run X11, etc. which generally seems like what this project is attempting to do. I'm not a systems software engineer[0], so I'm not positive where the new drivers live for the M1 (are they in Darwin? proprietary/exclusive to macOS?), but if those drivers are av…
As for Darwin source code, I'm reminded of the saying that if an economist sees a $100 bill on the sidewalk he says "if it was real someone would have already picked it up".
This is good of course but it's an uphill battle - just reverse engineering the Apple GPU and making a decent driver for it in itself is going to be a huge problem. Look at nouveau - we still don't have any way to reclock NVidia GPUs. Getting good experience and good battery life with reverse engineered hardware is impossible. Then there's going to be new gen hardware and firmware updates for existing ones to keep up…
Thankfully, Apple loads most firmware for us in the bootloader, so we don't have the blob problem that Nouveau does. This includes parts related to power management. Nouveau has an uphill battle because Nvidia is actively hostile, and because they have to support dozens of chips. We are starting with one. I do not expect for us to end up in a Nouveau situation with poor performance/PM over time. It will take time, of…
Is the WiFi chip in the M1 Macs a solved problem or did that need to be written from scratch as well? Just curious.
If for no other reason than how cool and fitting this name is I hope it succeeds.