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Linux Running on Apple M1

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Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#191

Post by saagarjha »

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?

Both are correct. Apple uses non-standard instructions themselves, but for third-party developers the standard ARM ISA is provided for use.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#192

Post by saagarjha »

Geminidog wrote: post #175
saagarjha wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it that you are wholly unfamiliar with the jailbreaking scene?

I'm familiar. The jail breaking scene and other examples are one offs though. You just need to take a holistic view of life and civilization to know how critical competition is to success. All of society and the development of capitalism to evolutionary biology is founded on competition. Competition is, in fact, the primary success story and collaboration is the side story. Citing the failure of one community discoun…

Putting politics aside, which I probably don't want to discuss in a thread about Apple silicon, competition where you argue about licensing and code sourcing for stuff that you are vying to upstream stuff to the same open source upstream does really not seem healthy.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#193

Post by u678u »

noisy_boy wrote: post #119
titzer wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I dont really understand why modern devs can't carry a 5 pound laptop. Its not exactly a burden.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#194

Post by fingerlocks »

Phrodo_00 wrote: post #190
crubier wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's the smaller things. Obviously MacOS won't have trouble with mac hardware, but my work macbook can't wake up my monitor through HDMI, or chain DP displays, or connect to my phone's storage through USB, etc...

I’ve never experienced the wake issue, but I always use usb-c to DP or HDMI and apparently those aren’t affected? Assuming it’s the same issue, a little googling shows the problem was fixed a year ago.

What phone are you having issues with? Every android phone I’ve used will communicate with adb. iPhone has never used USB mass storage, and support for that has nothing to do with MacOS.

Can’t comment on the daisy chain issue, I just learned that was a thing.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#195

Post by Jnr »

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.

Maybe someone else will also pick up some skills from this. He is streaming all his reversing sessions on Youtube, it is quite interesting.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#196

Post by [deleted] »

captn3m0 wrote: post #78
Someone wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it’s entering (dark?) gray territory, license wise, but has anybody ever attempted to wrap a Mac OS driver in a Linux compatibility layer?

marcan had answered it in one of the live streams - his opinion was that it was a last-ditch effort that shouldn't be required for most usecases. Perhaps for some of the peripheral stuff (such as the touchbar), but the GPU ought not to need it.

[deleted]

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#197

Post by Geminidog »

saagarjha wrote: post #192
Geminidog wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar. The jail breaking scene and other examples are one offs though. You just need to take a holistic view of life and civilization to know how critical competition is to success. All of society and the development of capitalism to evolutionary biology is founded on competition. Competition is, in fact, the primary success story and collaboration is the side story. Citing the failure of one community discoun…

Putting politics aside, which I probably don't want to discuss in a thread about Apple silicon, competition where you argue about licensing and code sourcing for stuff that you are vying to upstream stuff to the same open source upstream does really not seem healthy.

We're not talking about health. Competition and the cred received for for being first to market will drive people to compete and therefore innovate. Whether that's healthy or not is not only a big convoluted topic, but a separate topic.

Either way you're citing singular examples and calling it "seemingly unhealthy." It's a weak argument against my example of the entire modern world as a competitive arena.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#198

Post by colonwqbang »

vetinari wrote: post #86
izacus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're very complex, very stateful devices which also run their own compiled shader code. Not to mention auxiliary DSPs like video decoders (not sure if M1 has it as part of GPU or a separate block), power gating control and many many more. They may have in order of 100 registers to talk to them and they're horribly proprietary with pretty much no standardisation. Reverse engineering that is hellish at best - you ca…

The hurdle Noveau is facing is that some things, like reclocking, need firmware loaded onto the card. The firmware is not in non-volatile memory on the hardware, but a file shipped with drivers, the one shipped with proprietary drivers is not redistributable and if you wanted to make your own, it needs to be signed by Nvidia anyway. That's pretty much game over for Noveau, and it is not due to difficulties in figurin…

Why would you make your FW blobs be non-redistributable? An FW blob has only the purpose of running your hardware for your customers.

I can understand preventing FW patching, maybe. But redistributing the manufacturer's genuine FW, why not?

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#199

Post by fortran77 »

tw04 wrote: post #188
arghwhat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. Based on...? Apple is pretty straightforward: they support hardware until they don't. And they're quite explicit about ending support and it's almost always a major release. You might be able to hack support after that, but I've literally never had it be a "toss-up" about when Apple was or wasn't supporting their own hardware. As for Windows... I've got a 10 year old 26…

I run all three here. On Windows 10, if I say on the "happy path" everything "just works". I have a Lenovo laptop, and our desktops are Xeon boxes with Supermicro motherboards. No weird USB problems, etc.

Linux, however, is another story. Bad sleep support, forget about printing, scanning, GPGPU computing, etc. We use it when we have to.

Re: Linux Running on Apple M1

#200

Post by danudey »

tw04 wrote: post #188
arghwhat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Funny, that's how I feel with Windows and Mac. Based on...? Apple is pretty straightforward: they support hardware until they don't. And they're quite explicit about ending support and it's almost always a major release. You might be able to hack support after that, but I've literally never had it be a "toss-up" about when Apple was or wasn't supporting their own hardware. As for Windows... I've got a 10 year old 26…

I'm a huge apple fanboy, but there are still issues that crop up on macOS, like it or not.

My favourite example is one that the OP mentioned - not supporting multiple stream transport on Displayport. For those who aren't familiar, Displayport MST is a feature that allows multiple streams over one Displayport cable. Some monitors support this directly, meaning you can have

    Macbook -> Display1 -> Display2
rather than

    Macbook -> Display1
    Macbook -> Display2
This is great, and it really helps clean up your desk in multi-monitor setups and maintain that "one cable" philosophy that I, personally, love. And macOS supports MST too, which is great.

Except they don't support it for this.

What they support MST for is to allow vastly-higher-resolution displays on macOS, such as 5K displays, by splitting the display image over multiple stream transports to bypass the limit on resolutions and refresh rates that Displayport provides (or provided at the time).

For some reason, they just haven't bothered to implement MST to allow for multiple displays; it exists and is supported, but only for high-resolution displays. This is great if you're googling around and see that macOS supports MST, then you buy monitors which support MST and hey surprise it doesn't work and there's literally no indication why.

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