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Linux Running on Apple M1

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Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#111

Post by penagwin »

titzer wrote: post #99
meibo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even on old + modern thinkpads it feels like a lottery which hardware feature will stop working at a particular time, with the distros i've worked myself through. Ethernet, waking up from sleep mode, brightness adjustment... take your pick.

I discovered last week, to my chagrin, that the RAM on my x1 carbon Stinkpad was starting to fail--memtest x86+ confirmed it. Memory corruption is insidious, so I rushed to the internet to buy new DIMMs, opened the sucker up...and there's no DIMM. The RAM is just soldered into the motherboard. No upgrade, no fix. This is now a pile of unreliable junk that randomly flips bits in memory. So data evac commences, with MD…

I'm not sure how buying a M1 macbook pro will help considering it also has soldered ram?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#112

Post by RyJones »

CharlesW wrote: post #110
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. However, I’m optimistic that these will be mostly usable on Linux before they’re too obsolete or outdated. The platform is so popular and iconic that it’s drawing a lot of attention from Linux devs and reverse engineering crowds.

> No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. That's sound advice. As someone who doesn't use Linux as their daily driver, can I expect Linux to run perfectly in a VM on an M1 Mac?

I was able to install an ARM build of Ubuntu Server using the Parallels beta, and it works fine.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#113

Post by sdevonoes »

CharlesW wrote: post #110
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. However, I’m optimistic that these will be mostly usable on Linux before they’re too obsolete or outdated. The platform is so popular and iconic that it’s drawing a lot of attention from Linux devs and reverse engineering crowds.

> No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. That's sound advice. As someone who doesn't use Linux as their daily driver, can I expect Linux to run perfectly in a VM on an M1 Mac?

I'm also interested on this. I usually run Ubuntu via Vagrant + Virtualbox on my Mac.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#114

Post by alexhutcheson »

glitchc wrote: post #106

Until the Linux kernel leverages instructions specific to Apple M1's extended ISA, this is a waste of time. The whole point of the M1 experience is that out of the box, it's fast, silent and runs for days. Yes, Linux will run, as it would run on any ARM processor, but it will be slow, hot and run the battery down in a couple of hours. It will take years for the open-source community to reverse-engineer the ISA and wr…

What instructions from an extended ISA are you referring to? The only ones I've seen written up have been:

1. Instructions to change the memory ordering mode, which allows Rosetta2 to skip some expensive memory fences when translating x86 binaries to ARM.

2. Some instructions for matrix math.

I wouldn't expect either of these to affect typical usage or battery life much, unless your workflow involves running things that do a ton of matrix math.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#115

Post by asveikau »

varispeed wrote: post #21
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…

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".

Just from a skim it seems like there is a new interrupt controller driver. The copyright header credits Linus Torvalds so they probably got started based on copying an existing one, but that sounds like substantial work and ongoing maintenance.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#116

Post by Wowfunhappy »

midrus wrote: post #105
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have confidence in the parallel efforts being spearheaded by Marcan. He knows what he's doing and he's working on it full time.

And that's why this has no long term future. There are not that many people able to achieve this. One single person can't do it forever.

Presumably Apple isn't going to redesign their GPU architecture every generation? How much maintenance do you see this needing?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#118

Post by ogre_codes »

midrus wrote: post #84

Linux might run, but good luck with the drivers. And good luck with it keeping working with future upgrades of both, hardware and software. Heck, even today it is pretty difficult to get things working reliably unless it is a thinkpad or some other Linux friendly brand. A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensi…

> A Mac with subpar support for a webcam, energy saving, suspend/resume, the trackpad, brightness/volume controls, etc is not a laptop, it's an expensive paperweight.

There are Mac desktops as well. That said, I'd say the list of mandatory components on a laptop is:

- Decent GPU Drivers

- Workable power management with sleep/ awake

- Trackpad (this should be straight forward)

The webcam, and brightness controls are stretch goals. I can't imaging the trackpad is vastly different from currently shipping ones. The Webcam might cause some significant headaches since Apple secures that fairly tightly.

The onboard wifi modem is likely worthless, from what I recall, many of them are even in Windows laptops due to proprietary drivers.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#119

Post by noisy_boy »

titzer wrote: post #99
meibo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even on old + modern thinkpads it feels like a lottery which hardware feature will stop working at a particular time, with the distros i've worked myself through. Ethernet, waking up from sleep mode, brightness adjustment... take your pick.

I discovered last week, to my chagrin, that the RAM on my x1 carbon Stinkpad was starting to fail--memtest x86+ confirmed it. Memory corruption is insidious, so I rushed to the internet to buy new DIMMs, opened the sucker up...and there's no DIMM. The RAM is just soldered into the motherboard. No upgrade, no fix. This is now a pile of unreliable junk that randomly flips bits in memory. So data evac commences, with MD…

> Make sure not to buy a Stinkpad (or any hardware) with non-replaceable parts!

Correct - that is why I bought a Thinkpad X1 Extreme - both SSD and RAM are user replaceable. Granted its not as thin as X1 Carbon but I don't need to carry it around much so that is not a big issue for me.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#120

Post by 656565656565 »

RyJones wrote: post #112
CharlesW wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one should be purchasing a brand new M1 Mac with the expectation of perfect Linux support any time soon. That's sound advice. As someone who doesn't use Linux as their daily driver, can I expect Linux to run perfectly in a VM on an M1 Mac?

I was able to install an ARM build of Ubuntu Server using the Parallels beta, and it works fine.

It doesn’t work fine, UI resolution restricted, sticking cursor issues, no parallel tools available
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