Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux Running on Apple M1

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 282 posts

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#141

Post by DCKing »

wayneftw wrote: post #77
pantalaimon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadcom is selling hardware with the intention to run Linux on it, I guess that is the main difference.

Apple unlocked the bootloader which is certainly signaling intent.

Maybe. Certainly people within Apple would have thought about Linux for this. But Apple would need to provide some form of mechanism for unlocked bootloaders anyway to facilitate kernel/driver developers and security researchers, so I'm pretty sure other OSes is not the main reason they do this.

It does work out for Apple in the end. Their current standard 10 years' support will look quite short now Moore's law is dead and their hardware has barely any moving parts. But they'll shush some complaints if up to date third party OSes are available in 2030.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#142

Post by monopoledance »

aorth wrote: post #128
monopoledance wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Started streaming 8 hours ago WTF.

> Started streaming 9 hours ago Still going. Don't think even stopped to eat, drink, or bio break. I'm also surprised his computer hasn't crashed or something! Really fun to watch him work.

Yeah, fascinating and a bit morbid. It's 10h now.

I really think this is getting unhealthy hyperfixation and I really hope this is unusual for marcan, as this comes at a cost you can never make up for again.

Btw. if you enjoy these extended coding streams, you may like the Scanlime livestreams: https://www.youtube.com/c/scanlimeinprogress/videos. She's also a fascinating person to observe in her natural environment. The videos are also low key trippy and artsy.

Main channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/scanlime/videos

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#143

Post by titzer »

saagarjha wrote: post #136
titzer wrote: post #100

Qemu is also several kinds of broken on M1. I was able to get qemu to boot an x86 Linux after applying a huge pile of patches I found on a forum. If you are expecting to get up and running instantly with a VM to put all of your comfy old software in, not so fast!

How so? I've been using QEMU to boot Intel guests without issue for almost six months…

On the M1? I could only get it to work with some patches I found on some forums from < 1 month ago. The issue seems to be hardware wx protection, among other things.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#144

Post by saagarjha »

titzer wrote: post #143
saagarjha wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? I've been using QEMU to boot Intel guests without issue for almost six months…

On the M1? I could only get it to work with some patches I found on some forums from < 1 month ago. The issue seems to be hardware wx protection, among other things.

Oh, right, I just disabled that: https://gist.github.com/saagarjha/d1ddd98537150e4a09520ed3ed...

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#145

Post by glitchc »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #114
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 t…

Wow, I guess Torvalds himself must be wrong then:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/__trashed-6/

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#146

Post by glitchc »

izacus wrote: post #109
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 specific instructions? I've been told by Apple fans on this site before release that Apple doesn't use non-standard instructions in their ISA and doesn't need special compiler treatment? Who's right now?

See my response above.

Plus, what do Apple fanboys know about hardware?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#147

Post by titzer »

saagarjha wrote: post #144
titzer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the M1? I could only get it to work with some patches I found on some forums from < 1 month ago. The issue seems to be hardware wx protection, among other things.

Oh, right, I just disabled that: https://gist.github.com/saagarjha/d1ddd98537150e4a09520ed3ed...

Interesting. Do you work for Apple? The qemu patches that split up the RX/RW jit regions are maddeningly complicated. I'm curious if anyone has suggested this solution to them?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#148

Post by rgomez »

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…

Well about the hardware support, i.e. the Ubuntu Desktop certified hardware list is quite long [1], and I'm quite sure there are a lot more perfectly working brands/models that are just not appearing there. I've been using a Dell Inspiron model, for 8 years now not appearing in that list as a daily driver and every major distro worked perfectly out of the box, some tweak required from time to time but that's it.

[1] https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#149

Post by asveikau »

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.

Uhh... Linux supports a lot of hardware. Probably a lot of in-tree drivers that still get use were started as reverse engineering efforts by a small number of people.

Perhaps you're meaning to say Apple will iterate the hardware faster than people can add Linux support? That's plausible. It also was the status quo of Linux on PCs for many years. (Still the case with some hardware I guess.) That hasn't killed Linux yet.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#150

Post by crubier »

arghwhat wrote: post #102
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…

Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. I grab a machine and install Linux, and it works more or less out of the box. Maybe a few fixable quirks. And I don't use Thinkpads. I try to use Windows or macos, and it's a coin toss. Windows handling USB like hot garbage (hub balancing/buffer sizes leading to devices unable to activate, webcams glitching, input lagging at random intervals), display issues (macos doesn…

MacOS a coin toss and Linux being robust regarding drivers/hardware support on desktop? Are you talking about Hackintosh, or do we not live on the same planet?
Post reply on HN