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Linux Running on Apple M1

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Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#31

Post by saagarjha »

viraptor wrote: post #7

There's a bit of competition now going between asahi and corellium. While most of the spicy tweets have been removed, there's a summary https://twitter.com/AsahiLinux/status/1350547056679477250 Essentially, while this project may be quicker to get visible results, they may not be able to release all the code kosher for merging upstream. It will be interesting to see the next steps.

Competition is fine, but the "spiciness" was really just drama+pettiness on both sides :/ I'm hoping they're both past that now, as they should know better, but having two competing projects unable to assume good faith from each other is generally not healthy at all.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#32

Post by bayindirh »

thomasfl wrote: post #10

A Raspberry Pi powered by something similar to the M1 or A14 bionic processor would be something. The Broadcom 1.5 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 that powers the latest raspberry pi, is nothing compared to the new processor beasts from Apple.

While Raspberry Pi may not be as powerful as an M1, I'd not discount any of these small boards.

I have a OrangePi Zero w/ 512MB RAM at home and it handles a lot of stuff (Syncthing, DNSMasq, rsync based backups and more) without a glitch.

The only thing it doesn't like to handle SFTP encryption at high speeds. Processor gets visibly strained and overheats after a 4MB/s or so.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#34

Post by mhh__ »

jcstryker wrote: post #12

Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall trying to enable GPU support. I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple machi…

Even Nvidia publish stuff for the Nouveau drivers now.

I wouldn't bet on it. Apple are very insular on matters like this, it's their toy, end of.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#36

Post by arafsheikh »

jcstryker wrote: post #12

Love to see the competition between the projects trying to get linux running on the m1. Though I think they will hit a wall trying to enable GPU support. I think opening up just enough to enable this effort also serves as some good nerd marketing for Apple. This race keeps the m1 in the news regularly, giving hope to those who want a low-power and performant ARM machine that wouldn't otherwise consider an apple machi…

A good number of comments here mention dealing with the GPU is going to be a major hurdle. What makes porting GPU drivers significantly more challenging than everything else?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#37

Post by cillian64 »

saagarjha wrote: post #4

This was quite fast considering that Apple opened up booting custom objects sometime last week…it seems to still be software rendering for now, but it's good to see this progressing so quickly. It seems that there is effort being put into upstreaming this too (despite a couple of unfortunately hitches :/) so we might be seeing this ready for general-purpose use quite soon!

Apple officially opened up booting custom images on the M1? Do you have any more information about this? I had a quick search and couldn’t find any news stories.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#38

Post by acomjean »

I understand there is a thing with trying to run Linux everywhere, and it’s a fun exercise.

Even if Apple does do some open source support, Even if that hardware isn’t quite as nice, I prefer to buy/support hardware and vendors that support Linux at this point.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#39

Post by varispeed »

saagarjha wrote: post #24
varispeed wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it actually require any serious development or it is just mostly tweaking and changing things here and there? I am sorry if that sounds ignorant, but I thought these are just low hanging fruits to harvest. Also why Apple wouldn't do that themselves? To me it is an opposite to "nerd marketing", a big middle finger to Linux users - essentially "you are on your own".

A middle finger from Apple would be locking the bootloader–keeping it open, plus providing minimal tooling and telling people to figure it out, is about as close to "we'd love to see what you'll do with it" as Apple could possibly give. (Dealing with the GPU is going to be the majority of the work, I'd think.)

That would definitely be crossing the line. But I wonder if this behaviour of Apple is another avenue of stifling competition - that is how many smart people this will get involved that otherwise could have worked on a competing product? Then you can see how much resources any company dealing with Apple has to commit just to make sure their software keep up with Apple updates - that inhibits their growth and thus keeps Apple on top.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#40

Post by MisterTea »

thomasfl wrote: post #10

A Raspberry Pi powered by something similar to the M1 or A14 bionic processor would be something. The Broadcom 1.5 GHz 64-bit quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 that powers the latest raspberry pi, is nothing compared to the new processor beasts from Apple.

An Ampere or other Arm server chip would fit the bill. Aside from Apple, no one is making arm chips to serve the laptop/desktop segment. So there's this HUGE gap between the endless sea of embedded/mobile Arm chips and then jumps to a handfull of mega-many-core server chips.

Apple is finally filling in one of the Arm gaps with a mid-tier chip that can handle a desktop load efficiently while an efficient GPU can handle graphics without thermally clobbering each other.

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