271–280 of 414 posts
Solution: don't buy locked down Apple hardware. Yes, the chips look nice but it's just really unfortunate that they're from Apple and so come with all the Apple baggage. Just wait a couple years for competing chips that won't have the baggage.
For what problem is this the solution?
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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.
If you're talking about ptx, that's not the hardware ISA, but instead an IR for their shader compiler.
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I am all about the hacker cred here, but you need only take a look at the most directly comparable project, Nouveau to get an idea of how ridiculous the thought is that greenfield reverse engineering of apple's custom GPU will result in something that is desktop-class usable and reliable. Please remember that Nouveau can't even do better than a framebuffer on anything newer than a geforce 10 series card. GPU developm…
The problem with nouveau is more that it's trying to replicate the Nvidia blob driver (and then some), in that it supports multiple disparate architectures and at different levels (three generations might be a similar uarch, for instance). Replicating a single GPU driver would be significantly easier, albeit still a Herculean task. Especially if your main goal out of the gate is simply framebuffer support and maybe s…
Total spitballing though. Once they come out with the 16” MBP I may have fun poking at it.
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The reason people assume apple will prevent you from doing what you want with your computer, is because it’s the logical consequence of the strategy they’ve followed for the past 10 years over their whole product line. From phones, to cable, to messenging software. They’re into vertical integration and walled ecosystem.
Simply asserting this without evidence does not make it so. If Apple truly had this strategy they're doing a horrible job at it. Mostly since you are free to boot (or work on doing so at least) NetBSD and countless other things on practically every Mac they've ever released, including the latest ones. They're doing a horrible job at communicating this strategy too, because they're communicating the opposite. For this…
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Simply asserting this without evidence does not make it so. If Apple truly had this strategy they're doing a horrible job at it. Mostly since you are free to boot (or work on doing so at least) NetBSD and countless other things on practically every Mac they've ever released, including the latest ones. They're doing a horrible job at communicating this strategy too, because they're communicating the opposite. For this…
> Simply asserting this without evidence does not make it so. Goes in both directions. > Mostly since you are free to boot (or work on doing so at least) NetBSD and countless other things on practically every Mac they've ever released, including the latest ones. Gatekeeper wasn't a thing either, until it was, indeed, a thing. > They're doing a horrible job at communicating this strategy too, because they're communica…
I've been hearing about this supposed secret Apple plot to lock down the Mac and take away third party software distribution and operating systems for a decade now. If this is indeed Apple's plot, then they're really slow at implementing it. Maybe they'll sort it out in another decade.
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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.
This project is obviously a farce, but I would not say Apple is against Linux insofar as supporting it on the backend. Their own backends are designed for raytracing/render farms and will probably always run macOS though.
Of course it might not actually go anywhere, it doesn't even have a commit yet, literally just a logo and webpage, but let's see.
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You're totally correct, it is indeed just putting the drivers on the installation media and partitioning magic.
On 2017+ machines you don’t even need an external drive, during the partitioning setup it carves out a temporary partition to store the contents of the ISO + their drivers, windows installation customisation etc. And it’s all deleted after the installation of the drivers after windows is installed
In some cases all companies would have to do is not actively hide or obfuscate things. In others it may take more effort but still just a drop in the huge bucket compared to developing a system in the first place.
I love Apple's hardware, I even (mostly) love the OS. If they too believe that it is solid - why prevent people from running what they want? The majority will come back anyway - I've run Linux for years and still ended up on MacOS for simplicity. I'll still buy Macs and run MacOS because it works for me, it's not like letting me run Linux will cost them money or something. The vast majority of people don't know what Linux even is, there is no threat there.
Please note that this comment is not directed at people who choose to spend their time on projects like this. You're awesome, I just wish you didn't have to put so much effort in.
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…
Nvidia PTX-level openness for GPU-compute would be nice though.
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…
That said, hardware was simpler back then. Implementing drivers for modern GPU is a hard task, may be an impossible one. It’s like writing a second OS.